Gesture Politics or Real Commitment?

Gesture politics or real commitment? Gender inequality and the allocation of aid. UNU WIDER Working Paper No. 2013/079

39 Pages Posted: 23 Dec 2013

See all articles by Kai Gehring

Kai Gehring

CESifo; University of Bern - Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences

Axel Dreher

Heidelberg University

Stephan Klasen

University of Göttingen - Faculty of Economics and Business Administration; CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute); IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Date Written: August 01, 2013

Abstract

Donors of foreign aid increasingly claim to consider gender inequality in the recipient countries to be a serious concern. While aid specifically to promote gender equality receives only a tiny share of aid budgets, allocations to education, health, and civil society projects could be affected by gender inequality concerns. In this paper, we investigate whether donors indeed give more aid to countries with larger gender gaps ('need') in education, health, employment, or women’s rights, or rather reward improvements in those indicators ('merit').

We find some evidence that gender gaps in education and health affect the allocation of aid in those sectors and overall, while greater female political representation appears to be ‘rewarded’ with higher aid flows; employment gaps do not seem to affect the allocation of aid. Taking account of substantive and statistical significance, overall, there is modest evidence that gender gaps affect the allocation of aid in total and for particular sectors. The quantitative effects are rather small in size and differ by donor country (group) and donor as well as recipient characteristics.

Keywords: aid allocation, gender inequality, sector-specific aid, political economy, development, female empowerment

JEL Classification: F35, O11, O19

Suggested Citation

Gehring, Kai and Dreher, Axel and Klasen, Stephan, Gesture Politics or Real Commitment? (August 01, 2013). Gesture politics or real commitment? Gender inequality and the allocation of aid. UNU WIDER Working Paper No. 2013/079, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2371072 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2371072

Kai Gehring (Contact Author)

CESifo ( email )

Poschinger Str. 5
Munich, DE-81679
Germany

University of Bern - Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences ( email )

United States

Axel Dreher

Heidelberg University ( email )

Grabengasse 1
Heidelberg, 69117
Germany

HOME PAGE: http://www.axel-dreher.de

Stephan Klasen

University of Göttingen - Faculty of Economics and Business Administration ( email )

Platz der Goettinger Sieben 3
Goettingen, 37073
Germany
+49-551-397303 (Phone)
+49-551-397302 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: www.vwl.wiso.uni-goettingen.de/klasen.html

CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute)

Poschinger Str. 5
Munich, DE-81679
Germany

HOME PAGE: http://www.CESifo.de

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

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