Ethnic Diversity and Poverty

Fertility and Ethnic Diversity

This paper relates national fertility rates to political factors. I first review evidence that community norms affect fertility, ethnic groups compete politically in many countries, and a group’s relative size affects its ability to compete. This evidence jointly suggests that population growth and fertility may be public goods at the ethnic group level in diverse societies. Next, I present a s...

Ethnic Variation in Poverty and Parenting Stress

Given poverty rates in the USA, and that 33% of the nation’s poor are children (Jiang, Ekono, & Skinner, 2015), poor families are hardly on the fringes. Santiago Barquín’s words speak to the indiscriminate nature of poverty—it does not differentiate between color or creed when venting its fury. Living in poverty affects not only the individual, but also every domain associated with the individu...

Ethnic Diversity and Economic Performance

We survey and assess the literature on the positive and negative e.ects of ethnic diversity on economic policies and outcomes. Our focus is on communities of di.erent size and organizational structure, such as countries, cities in developed countries, villages and groups in developing countries. We also consider the endogenous formation of political jurisdictions and we highlight several open i...

Ethnic Diversity and Democratic Stability

Implications of ethnic diversity

Ethnically differentiated societies are often regarded as dysfunctional, with poor economic performance and a high risk of violent civil conflict. I argue that this is not well-founded. I distinguish between dominance, in which one group constitutes a majority, and fractionalisation, in which there are many small groups. In terms of overall economic performance, I show that both theoretically a...