Measuring Ethnic and Regional Group Differences

人们普遍认为，种族不同的社会比同质社会更难治理。理论上的争论往往将这些问题归因于这样一个事实，即种族分歧导致了不同的群体偏好。然而，在对异质社会问题的实证研究中，核心衡量标准是民族语言细分(ELF)，它不包含关于特定群体持有不同偏好的可能性的信息。由于ELF度量假设所有群体之间的实质性差异是相同的，因此它的使用需要一个隐含的假设，即一个社会中基于群体的冲突的可能性仅仅是一个人与来自不同群体的人互动的可能性的函数。然而，我们知道，来自不同种族的人往往有相似的偏好。对于政治上出现的大量问题，集团间的经济分歧将是集团间争端的核心。不同群体之间的收入差异可能导致对公共产品的不同需求、疏远或歧视的感觉、对再分配的不同态度以及不同的“阶级”身份。因此，这一研究项目的中心目标是利用家庭收入和预算调查创建一个新的跨国家数据集，以衡量不同群体之间的经济差异。这些数据将有助于探索种族、语言和地区经济差异如何与关于种族异质性的文献的核心结果相关。这些问题包括经济增长、公共产品提供、再分配和冲突。通过将有关经济差异的信息纳入种族分裂的衡量标准，将有可能更仔细地探讨已提出的将族裔与不良结果联系起来的机制。这些数据还将开启一系列新的研究机会。这项研究的主要好处将是通过创建和传播衡量群体间经济差异的跨国数据集，加强研究和教育的基础设施。该数据集将由80至100个国家组成，将包括一系列衡量集团间经济差异的指标。它还将包括标准的种族分裂和两极分化分数。

Ethnically heterogeneous societies are widely held to be more difficult to govern than homogeneous ones. Theoretical arguments often attribute the problems to the fact that ethnic divisions result in divergent group preferences. However, the core measure in empirical research on the problems with heterogeneous societies is ethno-linguistic fractionalization (ELF), which contains no information about the likelihood of particular groups holding divergent preferences. Since the ELF measure assumes that substantive differences between all groups are the same, its use requires the implicit assumption that the potential for group-based conflict within a society is simply a function of how likely an individual is to interact with someone from a different group. Yet we know that individuals from different ethnic groups often have similar preferences. For a large number of issues that arise in politics, group economic differences will be at the core of inter-group disputes. Income differences across groups can lead to different needs with respect to public goods, feelings of alienation or discrimination, different attitudes toward redistribution, and different "class" identities. The central objective of this research project is therefore to draw on household income and budget surveys to create a new cross-national dataset that measures economic differences across groups. The data will be useful for exploring how ethnic, linguistic, and regional economic differences are related to outcomes that have been central to the literature on ethnic heterogeneity. These include economic growth, public goods provision, redistribution and conflict. By incorporating information about economic differences into measures of ethnic cleavages, it will be possible to explore more carefully the mechanisms that have been proposed to link ethnicity with poor outcomes. The data will also open a range of new research opportunities.The primary benefit of the study will be to enhance the infrastructure for research and education by creating and disseminating a cross-national data set that measures inter-group economic differences. The data set, which will be made up of 80-100 countries, will include a wide range of measures of inter-group economic differences. It will also include standard ethnic fractionalization and polarization scores.