3.13 Instituto de Economía

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Risk sharing and kinship tightness: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa
(2024) Carvajal Silicato, Laura; Artiles, Miriam; Lafortune, Jeanne; Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Instituto de Economía
Previous literature provides evidence of partial informal insurance in developing countries where formal financial markets are deficient and people must rely on informal institutions to face unexpected events. I explore the impact of kinship tightness on informal risk sharing in Sub-Saharan Africa. By integrating household-level data from the Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) with kinship characteristics from the Ethnographic Atlas, I investigate how historical kinship structures influence the ability of households to manage income shocks in environments where access to formal financial markets is limited. I employ an OLS approach including individual and district level controls to address endogeneity concerns. I also analyze neighboring districts to isolate the effect of kinship tightness better and reinforce the robustness of the OLS results. The analysis reveals that tighter kinship networks facilitate effective risk-sharing behaviors, and help mitigate the adverse effects of income shocks on consumption. Results are robust to a range of tests and to the inclusion of various cultural and ethnic characteristics that, according to the literature, influence economic outcomes.