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Why Africans tolerate income inequality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 August 2021

Philip Nel
Philip Nel*
Affiliation:
Politics Programme, University of Otago, New Zealand, and Department of Political Science, Stellenbosch University, South Africa
*
Email: philip.nel@otago.ac.nz
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Abstract

African attitudes to income inequality have hardly been studied. As a result, we may have been missing a crucial part of the answer to the question why Africa is so unequal. This paper presents evidence that, across all self-identified class categories, African respondents in 16 African states, representative of all the regions of the continent, are on average considerably more tolerant of inequality than respondents from 43 comparable developing and transition countries. The aim of the paper is to try and explain these differences. It concludes that (a) a modified version of Albert Hirschman's notion of the ‘tunnel effect’ and (b) religious devotedness in the African context provide explanations for the observed variation between African respondents and their counterparts elsewhere. Experienced inequality, in contrast to overall income distribution, influences the tunnel effect more widely than economic growth. Religious belief shapes inequality tolerance in Africa more than the observance of religious practices.

Keywords

Africapublic opinionincome inequalityworld values surveys
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 59 , Issue 3 , September 2021 , pp. 343 - 365
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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