Selected theses 2023-24

Vaccine hesitancy poses a threat to public health initiatives of the 21st century. Following a stark divide in the rural/urban COVID-19 vaccine uptake and harsh disparities between these areas in COVID-19 moralities and morbidities, further understanding of the drivers of vaccine hesitancy are needed. This study makes use of the framework of place-based consciousness (PBC), pioneered by scholars of rural political science, such as Katherine Cramer, to explore this phenomenon as a mechanism by which to understand vaccine hesitancy. To examine this, an experimental survey was distributed to 300 Americans (150 rural and 150 urban) that inquired about their PBC, vaccine hesitancy, and trust in information about their health. To analyze this survey, I use OLS linear and ordinal logistic regression models to examine the relationship between PBC and vaccine hesitancy, through a mechanism of information (mis)trust. In this study, I confirm the results of previous studies of PBC that rural people experience greater PBC and this phenomenon seems to be driven by out-group resentment. Moreover, I find that place-based identity (if someone identifies as rural vs. urban) significantly modifies the relationship between PBC and vaccine hesitancy. That is, that vaccine hesitancy can be positively predicted by PBC in the rural sample. The results of this study offer insight into the reasons why rural areas are more vaccine hesitant and the discussion proposes future directions for confirming these preliminary insights, considering the limitations of this study.

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This study provides empirical evidence for the existence of hiring discrimination against Zainichi Koreans, an ethnic minority group in Japan with an "invisible" identity. Using a conjoint survey experiment conducted in the Kansai region of Japan, Japanese citizens were found to strongly prefer ethnically Japanese job applicants over Zainichi Korean applicants. However, this discriminatory preference was less pronounced when Zainichi applicants used Japanese pseudonyms rather than ethnic Korean names, suggesting concealing an invisible identity can mitigate discrimination. The results also demonstrate a conditional effect of intergroup social contact on discriminatory attitudes. Respondents with high self-reported contact with Zainichi Koreans were less likely to disfavor Zainichi applicants and exhibited smaller differences in their preferences between Zainichi applicants using Korean versus Japanese names compared to those with low contact. This finding provides support for Allport's contact hypothesis in the context of invisible identities. These results validate anecdotal evidence of discrimination against Zainichi Koreans and suggest those holding invisible identities face unique challenges, including potential discrimination even when concealing their identity. They also indicate a meaningful role for intergroup contact in reducing such prejudice.

Keywords: discrimination, Japan, Zainichi, conjoint analysis, intergroup contact, inivisible identity

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Farming households in the developing world face considerable risk. The smallholder paradigm common in developing countries leaves most farming households vulnerable to idiosyncratic shocks. In sub-Saharan Africa, where 80% of farms are smaller than 2 hectares and account for 40% of total cultivated area, household income depends on within-year harvest cycles and across-year variation in weather (Lowder et al., 2016). Agriculture on smallholder farms is predominantly rain-fed and does not rely on irrigation, which means that yields will vary idiosyncratically from year to year (Conning and Udry, 2005). Variation in agricultural yields correspond to variation in household income, consumption, and well-being.

Agricultural households in sub-Saharan Africa have developed a wide variety of techniques to smooth their consumption in response to these unavoidable and potentially livelihood-threatening risks. These techniques range in their level of formality — that is, their degree of regularity, contractuality, and institutionalization (La Porta and Shleifer, 2014). Formal methods include crop insurance, the optimal method of consumption smoothing across uncertain agroclimatic states, and credit from banks or microfinance institutions (MFIs) (Conning and Udry, 2005). Less formal methods include SACCOs (Savings and Credit Cooperatives), open and voluntary associations of households who meet regularly to deposit into a common pool and disburse loans to selected households within the group. This method can be suboptimal because the risk of default is contained within the group, rather than diluted across the portfolio of a larger financial institution, but their social informality makes them relatively more accessible in the developing world.

Nonetheless, these institutional financial services suffer from several problems in the developing world. Information asymmetries between credit issuers and customers can cause adverse selection and moral hazard, and poor institutional infrastructure can result in inconsistent enforcement of financial contracts even if information is perfect. Moreover, financial regulation and undeveloped infrastructure in rural areas makes it costly for banks to enter new areas, and thereby costly for potential customers to use new financial services. SACCOs avoid the former of these problems by leveraging social networks to reveal important information about potential borrowers and enforce contracts but cannot avoid the latter because they require the existence of a commercial bank to operate in a community.

In addition to these loan products, households can also use non-contractual financial services to informally smooth their consumption when faced with adverse climatic conditions. Bank accounts, for example, allow households to sell valuable assets like livestock, timber, crops, or land and store liquidity to maintain their well-being amidst unexpectedly low agricultural income, but suffer from the same access issues described above (Fafchamps et al., 1998; Tabetando et al., 2023). 

Mobile money services offer a relatively inexpensive and accessible alternative to an institutional bank account. Mobile money providers allow customers to operate a conventional bank account from their cell phone. Unlike commercial banks, which face high capital and institutional barriers to operate in a particular region, mobile money networks only require dense usage of cell phones and a few individuals willing to serve as agents who are authorized to make deposits and withdrawals from the network on behalf of clients. Users can transfer money to others within the same mobile money network, transport money over short distances, and save money for extended periods of time. This allows for the same informal means of financial intermediation described above — households can sell fixed assets and save and spend the resulting liquidity using their mobile money account. It also connects rural households with urban areas and allows them to receive remittances in times of stress, opening an additional informal means of intermediation to farming households.

This thesis is concerned with the relationship between drought and the take-up of financial services among rural households in Tanzania. After a literature review, I describe two measures of climatic stress on agriculture — seasonal instability and lack of moisture — and test for their effects on the usage of loans, SACCOs, bank accounts, and mobile money.

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