Abstract
The study investigated whether or not misdirection of public resources to a favored region brings material improvements in the lives of the population that is alleged to be receiving the resources.  In this study, the region in question is Tigray province in northern Ethiopia.  Economic data from the 2016 Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) are examined with a focus on Tigray Region.  The neighboring Amhara Region is used as control. Sample data on 1734 households from Tigray and 1902 households from Amhara Region were analyzed without weighting using the statistical software SAS 9.4 and the Geographic Information System software ArcGIS 10.4.1. We found evidence of a statistically significant advantage for Tigray Region in ownership of four modern amenities – radio, mobile phones, refrigerator, and access to electricity by individual households (p< 0.001). However, we did not find evidence of greater wealth in Tigray for the general population when the analysis was rerun based on DHS’ wealth index. On the contrary, the data for sampling clusters in Tigray appeared to show the region as being poorer than Amhara when viewed through the lens of DHS’ wealth index which is a more comprehensive measure of economic wellbeing than owning a radio or possessing a mobile phone.  A one-tailed Wilcoxon Man-Whitney U statistic of DHS’ wealth index for Tigray and Amhara Regions showed a statistically significant difference (p < 0.001) with a higher mean score for Amhara Region (1870.3) than for Tigray Region (1761.6) suggesting a better economic standing for the population of Amhara Region than Tigray Region. We also found Amhara Region to be more egalitarian and Tigray Region less so on the scale of livelihoods captured by DHS’ economic indicators. Evidence for this comes from a Geographic Information System (GIS) Kernel Density analysis of DHS’ wealth index which showed what appear to be significant geographic concentrations of both poverty and wealth in Tigray Region.
Highlights
1.1 The ProblemA number of outcomes are linked to actions by politicians directing or redirecting disproportionate shares of public resources to a favored geography, often their own region of birth
For Kramon and Posner (2013) the answer depends in part on the objectives of the study in regional favoritism and redistributive politics – cash transfers, roads, educational spending, electrification, or targeted grants? This study seeks to find out if any of the above four scenarios apply in Ethiopia, and to provide answers that contribute to the literature on the subject of regional favoritism and redistributive politics by analyzing economic indicators found in the country’s 2016 Demographic and Health Survey
Our null hypothesis is that it did not. We test this hypothesis by comparing Tigray Region with the neighboring Amhara Region where the socio-economic circumstances of the early 1990s when Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF)/Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) came to power were more or less identical
Summary
A number of outcomes are linked to actions by politicians directing or redirecting disproportionate shares of public resources to a favored geography, often their own region of birth These actions include the following: 1) targeted benefits are provided to individuals or groups in the favored region while the general population sees no gain (Asher and Novosad, 2017) 2) the entire public benefits but it does so at the expense of the population in nonfavored regions (Manh Vu and Yamada, 2017), 3) no one benefits as ill-intentioned program implementations result in significant waste which leads to mass anger accompanied by violence (Ilorah, 2009), 4) international aid dollars and national resources in the form of liquid assets are redirected by those in positions of power away from their region of birth for safe keeping in international banks, or for investments abroad. It does so by looking for evidence of the household-level impacts of disproportionate resource allocations that have allegedly benefitted the population Tigray Region in northern Ethiopia (Figure 1). jgg.ccsenet.org
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