The Paradox of the Isolated Poor An Empirical View on the Political Economy of Capital City Isolation in Sub-Saharan Africa

近年来，撒哈拉以南非洲地区令人担忧的高收入不平等及其对经济发展的不利影响已成为该大陆经济研究的焦点（国际货币基金组织，2015；联合国开发计划署，2017）。不幸的是，许多调查非洲大陆不平等现象的研究主要集中在描述诸如“物质资本、人力资本和土地（…）在某些群体或地区高度集中”等症状（开发署，2017年：二），而不是研究其潜在机制。此外，截至目前，只有少数学者（例如Hodler和Raschky（2014）或Addison等人（2017））研究了经济不平等的空间模式和原因。然而，大多数文章关注的是“城乡偏见”，仅限于南非，而忽视了空间不平等的其他主要驱动因素（例如Lehohla和Shabalala(2014)）。在这项研究中，我提出了靠近首都作为撒哈拉以南非洲地区经济不平等的一个新维度，并调查了其经济、社会和政治渠道。

The alarmingly high level of income inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa and its adverse implications for economic development have moved into the focus of economic research on the continent in recent years (International Monetary Fund, 2015; UNDP, 2017). Unfortunately, a lot of the studies investigating inequality on the continent have mainly focused on describing symptoms such as the "high concentration of physical capital, human capital and land (...) in certain groups or regions" (UNDP, 2017: ii) rather than examining their underlying mechanisms. Further, as of today, only a limited number of scholars (see for example Hodler and Raschky (2014) or Addison et al. (2017)) have examined spatial patterns and causes of economic inequality. Yet, most of the articles focus on the `urban-rural bias', are limited to South Africa and overlook other major drivers of spatial inequality (see for example Lehohla and Shabalala (2014)). In this study, I put forward proximity to the capital city as a new dimension of economic inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa and investigate its economic, social and political channels.