Cross-tabulating the age of our officials with their gender, we can approximate the likely future trend of the gender ratio. In Ghana and Pakistan, there is a more equal gender ratio among younger members of the service, implying a gradual equalisation of the gender balance. Since the Ghana survey we utilise here was undertaken in 2000, more recent figures support the predicted trend, as in 2016 roughly 40% of Ghana’s civil servants were women. There does not seem to be such a trend in any of our other countries, such that the status quo of a male dominated (or female dominated in the case of the Philippines) service may continue for some time.

Given the importance of education to a civil servant’s abilities, Table 4 reports the degree to which civil servants have postgraduate qualifications. There is a high degree of variation across countries.<sup>17</sup> Partly this may be the distinct samples of officials (with a reminder to caveat interpretation of the Pakistan statistics on the lower response rate there) and the timing differences between Ghana and the other surveys. However, the differences are striking. With the long tenures outlined above, the quality of staff and thus their level of education is likely to be an important aspect both of a single civil servants experience of the service as well as the joint production of all civil servants. Understanding the impact of improved education on civil service productivity would seem a first-order issue for research.

# **Career**

In Nigeria and the Philippines, the surveys asked officials what their motivations were for joining the civil service. In Nigeria, ‘The chance to serve Nigeria’ was the most popular choice (37%), followed by ‘I was interested in the type of work’ (29%) and ‘The stable career path’ (20%). In the Philippines, ‘Job security’ was the main motivator (23%), followed by ‘Personal satisfaction’ (12%) and ‘The benefits’ (11%). ‘Mission’ (8%) was the sixth highest ranked motivator.<sup>18</sup> These responses question whether the assertion in Banuri and Keefer (2013) that more intrinsically motivated citizens select into the public sector is true across countries, or whether reasons for joining the service vary across contexts. This interpretation would be consistent with Dal Bo et al (2013) and Ashraf et al (2015), both of which find the specific recruitment strategies employed for public officials influences the nature of individuals who apply for government posts.

Table 4 summarises officials’ beliefs around whether selection into the civil service is based on merit. In Indonesia and Pakistan, the question on this topic was the extent to which respondents believed that ‘The selection process identifies the best people for the job’, whereas in Ghana respondents are asked whether selection is based on interviews and/or written examinations. The responses indicate that most officials in Ghana and Indonesia believe that recruitment is based on merit, while this is only true for 39% of officials in Pakistan.

However, there is substantial heterogeneity across organizations in these beliefs. Figure 2 charts organsational averages of stated beliefs in meritocratic recruitment for each of the organizations in our data. Each marker on the graph represents the proportion of staff in an organization that believe recruitment

> 17While not reported in Table 4, the proportion of civil servants with a postgraduate qualification varies significantly across the layers of government. In Ghana, 37% of officials working in departments under the President have postgraduate qualifications, a figure which drops to below 20% for other ministries and to 16% at the local government tier. Similarly, in Nigeria the rate of postgraduate education drops at each tier below the federal, with only 9% of local government officials having a relevant degree.

> 18In Nigeria, officials were asked, “What most influenced you to take up a career in the service?” and had to choose a single option from the list: ‘I was interested in the type of work’, ‘The income prospects’, ‘The prestige associated with such a job’, ‘The stable career path that a job in the service affords’, ‘The chance to serve Nigeria’, ‘It was the only employment I could get’, ‘Other (please specify)’. In the Philippines, officials were asked, “Please tell us why you chose to (and continue to) work in your job,” and could choose multiple options from the list: ‘ Job security’, ‘Good salary’, ‘Benefits’, ‘Flexible hours’, ‘Reasonable work load’, ‘Advancement potential’, ‘Social status’, ‘Personal satisfaction’, ‘Mission’, ‘Other (please specify)’. Since the Philippines survey allowed multiple answers to this question, the proportions have been rescaled to sum to 1 in line with the Nigeria proportions.

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