Replication Data for: Quantity over Quality? Local Income Inequality and Public Service Delivery in Brazil

Harvard Dataverse

Abstract

How does income inequality affect public service provision? Theories of redistribution predict that inequality strengthens coalitions involving the poor, boosting public services in poorer neighbourhoods, but emerging evidence suggests inequality can harm public service quality and the poor's welfare. To reconcile these findings, this study integrates theories of redistribution and accountability. Inequality empowers the poor, but polarized resources also limit the poor's ability to observe public service performance and hold their representatives accountable, skewing representatives' incentives towards more visible actions such as constructing new infrastructure at the expense of less visible services such as maintenance and training. Exploiting local variation in municipal income inequality in Brazil and plausibly exogenous variation in inequality from the colonial period, spatial microdata on education and healthcare confirm that poor neighbourhoods in unequal municipalities receive more visible infrastructure but fewer hidden inputs, compromising public service quality.

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