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Do Protestant Aid Organizations Aid Protestants Only?

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  • Bengtsson, Niklas

    (Department of Economics)

Abstract

We estimate the impact of a village-level assistance program run by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania on literacy and schooling. The programs are partly funded by official development assistance from the US and EU. Villages in northwestern Tanzania are economically isolated but are still characterized a non-trivial degree of religious diversity. This setting allows us to study whether development assistance can spill over within villages, across religious affliation, while maintaining that treatment externalities between villages are mar- ginal. We find that the program increased literacy by 15-20 percent and primary schooling by 10-15 percent, but only among Protestant children. Catholic children living in the same targeted villages were virtually unaffected.

Suggested Citation

  • Bengtsson, Niklas, 2008. "Do Protestant Aid Organizations Aid Protestants Only?," Working Paper Series 2008:6, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:uunewp:2008_006
    as

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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Faith-based foreign aid; Impact evaluation; Religion; Sub-Saharan Africa;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F35 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Aid
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development

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