Poverty and “Witch” Killing in Tanzania

Existing empirical studies are typically unable to sort out the direction of causality between poverty and violent crime in less developed countries. This study uses rainfall variation in a poor rural Tanzanian district – which is plausibly exogenous, and is closely related to income – from a new dataset to estimate the impact of negative income shocks on murder rates, in 66 villages across eleven years. Extreme rainfall leads to a large statistically significant increase in the murder of “witches” – typically elderly women killed by their own relatives, kin, or neighbors – but not in other types of murders. The results are consistent with a model in which households near subsistence consumption drive away or kill elderly household members to safeguard the nutritional status of other household members. The theory is bolstered by the fact that most killings take place in low socio-economic villages during the so-called “hungry season” of the year, and that most victims are from poor households. The results provide novel empirical evidence on the role of extreme poverty as a cause of violent crime in rural Africa. * Edward Miguel ([email protected]). The author thanks ICS Africa and the Meatu District Council for their cooperation in all stages of the project, and would especially like to acknowledge the contributions of Polycarp Waswa, Stephanie Jayne, Avery Ouellette, the entire ICS field staff and especially Melissa GonzalezBrenes, without whom this project would not have been possible. Gratitude is also extended to the households and Village Councils of Meatu District for participating in the study. Farhan Zaidi, Frances Fontanilla, Negar Ghobadi, and Tina Green have provided excellent research assistance. I thank Adam Ashforth, Jenna JohnsonHanks, Gerard Kiers, Francisco Perez, Matthew Rabin, and Ragnar Torvik for helpful conversations. The author is grateful for financial support from the National Science Foundation (SGER-#0213652). All errors are my own.