Post-doc, Lund University
Research interests: Income inequality and fiscal trends in colonial Ghana
My research focuses on understanding the historical origins of current development challenges in sub-Saharan Africa broadly and Ghana in particular. I am specifically interested in long-term trends and determinants of social and economic inequality, poverty, access to financial services, and fiscal capacity.
Prince Young Aboagye and Jutta Bolt
Prince Young Aboagye
Prince Young Aboagye
Colonial Ghana has attracted much attention as a successful peasant-led, cocoa-driven economy. Using a social tables approach, we find that income inequality was high prior to the introduction of cocoa; remained stable in the early decades of the twentieth century; declined during the Great Depression in the early 1930s; and, finally, increased in the second half of the colonial era. Cocoa played an important role directly and indirectly, as rapidly rising cocoa prices after the Great Depression benefitted the large-scale cocoa farmers, and cocoa-led growth spread to both the private and public sectors and resulted in increasing incomes for government employees, skilled and commercial workers.
Data is available here.