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The partition of German Togoland after World War I provides a natural experiment to test the impact of British and French colonization. Using data of recruits to the Ghanaian colonial army 1908–1955, we find that literacy and religious affiliation diverge at the border between the parts of Togoland under British and French control as early as in the 1920s. We partly attribute this to policies towards missionary schools. The divergence is only visible in the South where educational and evangelization efforts were strong. Contemporary survey data show that border effects that began in colonial times still persist today. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study presents fresh evidence on nutrition and health in colonial Kenya by using a new and comprehensive data set of African army recruits and civilians and applying a powerful measure of nutritional status: mean population height. Findings demonstrate huge regional inequalities, but only minor changes in the mean height of cohorts born 20 years before and after colonization. From 1920 onwards secular improvements took place, which continued after independence. I conclude that however bad colonial policies and devastating short-term crises were, the net outcome of colonial times was a significant progress in nutrition and health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Reliable information on inequality within countries is highly scarce, especially for Less Developed Countries (LDCs). Using anthropometric measures, we extend the inequality database for Sub-Saharan Africa to no less than 28 countries over six five-year periods from 1950 to 1980, and to some 200 regions within those countries. In this process, we also test in depth the validity of objections against the derivation of inequality measures from height data. In a second step, we test the determinants of inequality within and between the 200 regions under study. Our set of explanatory variables includes protein supply, cash cropping, industrial structure, mineral resources, distance to the countries’ capital, urbanization, education, population density, and ethnic fractionalization. We find that monoculture cash cropping increases inequality, whereas diversified cash cropping has the opposite effect. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

One of the most powerful cultural transformations of the 20th century has been the dramatic expansion of Christianity outside of Europe. This unique historical process was facilitated by vast Christian missionary efforts. In this paper, we study the economic effects of Christian missions in Ghana. We rely on six distinct identification strategies that exploit exogenous variations in Christian missionary expansion from 1828 to 1932. We find no association between Christian missions, whether Protestant, Catholic, Presbyterian or Methodist, and local economic development, whether during contemporary or colonial times. However, some results suggest that Christian missions might have had a positive effect on human capital formation. There might thus be contexts in which missions promoted human capital accumulation without this necessarily translating into local economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]