# **Table A3: Investigating the Determinants of Committee Membership**

**Dependent Variable: System of Ten Equations in Membership of Sectoral Committees Robust Standard Errors**

**Estimates by Maximum Likelihood to Fit a SUR Model**

||**Member of**<br>**Agriculture**<br>**Committee**|**Member of**<br>**Education**<br>**Committee**|**Member of**<br>**Environment**<br>**Committee**|**Member of FCT**<br>**Committee**|**Member of**<br>**Health**<br>**Committee**|**Member of**<br>**Housing**<br>**Committee**|**Member of**<br>**Water**<br>**Committee**|**Member of**<br>**Women/Youth**<br>**Committee**|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|**Politician has relevant qualifications/experience [yes=1]**|0.51***|0.48***|0.69***|0.82***|0.73***|0.68***|0.56***|0.47***|
||(0.04)|(0.04)|(0.06)|(0.04)|(0.05)|(0.04)|(0.05)|(0.12)|
|**Age of politician**|0.000|0.001|0.002|-0.002|-0.002|-0.002|0.001|0.001|
||(0.002)|(0.002)|(0.002)|(0.002)|(0.002)|(0.002)|(0.002)|(0.001)|
|**Sex of politician [female=1]**|0.16***|0.00|-0.01|0.04|-0.12**|-0.04|0.03|0.30**|
||(0.06)|(0.06)|(0.06)|(0.05)|(0.06)|(0.06)|(0.07)|(0.12)|
|**Politician years of education**|0.00|0.02**|0.00|-0.01|-0.03***|-0.01|0.00|0.00|
||(0.01)|(0.01)|(0.01)|(0.01)|(0.01)|(0.01)|(0.01)|(0.01)|
|**Level of political competition**|0.28**|0.12|0.03|-0.13|-0.14|0.02|-0.12|-0.08|
||(0.11)|(0.11)|(0.10)|(0.09)|(0.10)|(0.11)|(0.12)|(0.07)|
|**Index of poverty**|-0.06|-0.04|-0.08|0.07|0.02|0.02|0.04|-0.07|
||(0.12)|(0.13)|(0.12)|(0.10)|(0.11)|(0.12)|(0.14)|(0.08)|
|**Proportion of constituents with access to potable water**|-0.08|0.06|-0.06|0.09|0.06|0.05|-0.05|-0.03|
||(0.07)|(0.07)|(0.07)|(0.06)|(0.06)|(0.07)|(0.08)|(0.05)|
|**Time in minutes to nearest primary school**|0.004|-0.004|0.002|0.001|0.003|0.002|-0.004|0.003|
||(0.004)|(0.004)|(0.003)|(0.003)|(0.003)|(0.004)|(0.004)|(0.002)|
|**Average education of household head**|-0.01|-0.01|0.01|0.00|0.01|0.00|0.01|0.01|
||(0.01)|(0.01)|(0.01)|(0.01)|(0.01)|(0.01)|(0.01)|(0.01)|
|**Politician and constituency controls**|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|
|**Correlation of residuals in SUR system:**|||||||||
|_Agriculture_|1.00||||||||
|_Education_|-0.14|1.00|||||||
|_Environment_|-0.03|0.02|1.00||||||
|_FCT_|-0.09|-0.06|0.02|1.00|||||
|_Health_|-0.04|-0.05|0.07|0.07|1.00||||
|_Housing_|-0.03|-0.05|-0.04|0.12|0.05|1.00|||
|_Water_|-0.12|-0.09|0.03|0.00|0.00|0.06|1.00||
|_Women/Youth_|0.03|-0.01|0.12|0.12|0.01|-0.07|0.10|1.00|
|**Observations**|345|345|345|345|345|345|345|345|

**Notes** : *** denotes significance at 1%, ** at 5%, and * at 10% level.  Robust standard errors are in parentheses.  Columns report maximum likelihood estimates to fit a SUR model for the ten sectoral committees.  The dependent variable in all specifications is a binary variable reflecting whether a politician is a member of the committee for the named sector, taking the value 1 when the politician is a member.  The 'FCT Committee' refers to the Federal Capital Territory Committee that has jurisdiction over the building of infrastructure within the Federal Capital Territory, the municipal area in which the capital, Abuja, sits.  Politician controls are comprised of constituency-level controls for the sex, age, years of education and tenure in congress of the relevant politician.  In the very small number of cases in which age or years of education are missing, I replace the missing value with the mean of the rest of the politicians and include a dummy variable to indicate the missing data.  Constituency characteristics are comprised of the means and standard deviations of the following indices: the proportion of poor in the constituency, measured by a national poverty index, the average years of education of the household head, the proportion of constituents with access to potable water, the average time in minutes to the nearest primary school, and the average time in minutes to the nearest secondary school.  Means and standard deviations of the following indices are also included to reflect the frequency with which constituents benefit from a public project of the named type in the five years preceding 2006: construction of electrification infrastructure, rehabilitation of electrification infrastructure, well/borehole, construction of piped water infrastructure, rehabilitation of piped water infrastructure, sanitation, school construction project, school rehabilitation, health facility construction, health facility rehabilitation, road construction, tarring/grading of roads, transportation services, and agricultural-inputs schemes.  Finally, constituency characteristics include a set of indicators of the economic dynamics of the constituency, comprising indicators of improvements in opportunities for employment, the availability of agricultural inputs, number of buyers of agriculture produce, the availability of extension services, the availability of credit facilities, and the availability of consumer goods.  All specifications include dummies for five of the six geo-political zones and an indicator of the 'grade' of the committee under which the project falls, which is a dummy that takes the value 1 if the committee is perceived to be of high political weight or 0 otherwise.  Figures are rounded to two decimal places.