Long Run Consequences of Ethnic Conflict On Social Capital: Evidence from South Africa

This paper studies the following research question: What are the consequences of historical ethnic conflict on contemporary levels of social capital? This question is relevant, since understanding the consequences of historical ethnic violence on contemporary social capital can provide useful inputs to design effective State-building policies. I exploit Mfecane, a period of ethnic upheaval in South African history, as a setting to examine the causal effects of historical ethnic conflict on contemporary levels of social capital. For this end, I use a combination of a historical approximation of the Mfecane warzone with geocoded data from the Afrobarometer project (2000-2016). Using an instrumental variables strategy, I find that historical ethnic conflict decreases contemporary trust in people among individuals living within the borders of Mfecane, while increasing trust in relatives and neighbors. Increases in in-group trust appear to be driven by the long run persistence of parochial altruism. Conversely, lower levels of betweengroup trust can be explained by the lack of economic incentives to cooperate with strangers in former warzones. These results are suggestive of a degree of substitutability between in-group and between-group social capital, at the community level.