General literacy and effective taxation system in Africa

Abstract

This inquiry provides empirical evidence on the effect of general literacy on tax revenue mobilization in Africa over the period 1996–2021. This evidence is important given the low level of taxation in Africa and the lack of clarity on the nexus between a country’s literacy level and taxation effort. The paper employs a simultaneous quantile regression, and uses three different indicators of tax revenue mobilization as a percentage of GDP. The motivation for quantile regression technique is primarily based on two essential reasons: (i) the argument that the effect of literacy on taxation effectiveness is dependent on the existing level of tax revenue mobilization; (ii) tax revenue mobilization policies, to be effective, need to be adapted differently across countries with low, intermediate, and high levels of existing tax mobilization effort. Results show that improvement in general literacy appears to promote tax mobilization effort, and that the effect of general literacy on taxation is stronger for direct taxes than for indirect taxes (in terms of both significance and magnitude). Furthermore, in most of the results, the impact of general literacy is slightly stronger in the upper quantiles of the general literacy distributions. The results remain robust over alternative econometric estimation techniques.

Keywords

• General literacy
• taxation
• direct tax
• indirect tax
• Africa