IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v348y2024ics0277953624002570.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Civil service organization as a political determinant of health: Analyzing relationships between merit-based hiring, corruption, and population health

Author

Listed:
  • Patterson, Andrew C.

Abstract

A growing literature finds that the way governments are organized can impact the societies they serve in important ways. The same is apparent with respect to civil service organizations. Numerous studies show that the recruitment of civil servants based on their credentials rather than on nepotism or patronage reduces corruption in government. Political corruption in turn appears to harm population health. Up to this time, however, civil service organization is not a recognized determinant of health and is little discussed outside of political science disciplines. To provoke a broader conversation on this subject, the following study proposes that meritocratic recruitment of civil servants improves population health. To test this proposition, a series of regression models examines comparative data for 118 countries. Consistent with study hypotheses, meritocratic recruitment of civil servants corresponds longitudinally with both lower rates of corruption and lower rates of infant mortality. Results are similar after robustness checks. Findings with regard to life expectancy are more mixed. However, additional tests suggest meritocratic recruitment contributes to life expectancy over a longer span of time. Findings also offer more support for a direct pathway from meritocratic recruitment to population health rather than via changes in corruption levels per se, although this may depend on a country's level of economic development. Overall, this study offers first evidence that civil service organization, particularly the recruitment of civil servants based on the merits of their applications rather than on whom they happen to know in government, is a positive determinant of health. More research in this area is needed.

Suggested Citation

  • Patterson, Andrew C., 2024. "Civil service organization as a political determinant of health: Analyzing relationships between merit-based hiring, corruption, and population health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 348(C).
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:348:y:2024:i:c:s0277953624002570
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.116813
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953624002570
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.116813?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. La Porta, Rafael & Lopez-de-Silanes, Florencio & Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert, 1999. "The Quality of Government," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 15(1), pages 222-279, April.
    2. Mon-Chi Lio & Ming-Hsuan Lee, 2016. "Corruption costs lives: a cross-country study using an IV approach," International Journal of Health Planning and Management, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(2), pages 175-190, April.
    3. Monica Violeta Achim & Viorela Ligia Văidean & Sorin Nicolae Borlea, 2020. "Corruption and health outcomes within an economic and cultural framework," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 21(2), pages 195-207, March.
    4. Amber Hsiao & Verena Vogt & Wilm Quentin, 2019. "Effect of corruption on perceived difficulties in healthcare access in sub-Saharan Africa," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(8), pages 1-12, August.
    5. Fairbrother, Malcolm, 2014. "Two Multilevel Modeling Techniques for Analyzing Comparative Longitudinal Survey Datasets," Political Science Research and Methods, Cambridge University Press, vol. 2(1), pages 119-140, April.
    6. Roni Factor & Minah Kang, 2015. "Corruption and population health outcomes: an analysis of data from 133 countries using structural equation modeling," International Journal of Public Health, Springer;Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), vol. 60(6), pages 633-641, September.
    7. Siddiqi, Arjumand & Hertzman, Clyde, 2007. "Towards an epidemiological understanding of the effects of long-term institutional changes on population health: A case study of Canada versus the USA," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 64(3), pages 589-603, February.
    8. Chandan Sharma & Arup Mitra, 2019. "Corruption and Economic Growth: Some New Empirical Evidence from a Global Sample," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(8), pages 691-719, November.
    9. Barro, Robert J. & Lee, Jong Wha, 2013. "A new data set of educational attainment in the world, 1950–2010," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 184-198.
    10. Matthieu Hanf & Astrid Van-Melle & Florence Fraisse & Amaury Roger & Bernard Carme & Mathieu Nacher, 2011. "Corruption Kills: Estimating the Global Impact of Corruption on Children Deaths," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(11), pages 1-7, November.
    11. Holmberg, Sören & Rothstein, Bo, 2011. "Dying of corruption," Health Economics, Policy and Law, Cambridge University Press, vol. 6(4), pages 529-547, October.
    12. Nejat Anbarci & Monica Escaleras & Charles Register, 2006. "Traffic Fatalities and Public Sector Corruption," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(3), pages 327-344, August.
    13. Halleröd, Björn & Rothstein, Bo & Daoud, Adel & Nandy, Shailen, 2013. "Bad Governance and Poor Children: A Comparative Analysis of Government Efficiency and Severe Child Deprivation in 68 Low- and Middle-income Countries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 19-31.
    14. Nejat Anbarci & Monica Escaleras & Charles A. Register, 2009. "The Ill Effects of Public Sector Corruption in the Water and Sanitation Sector," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 85(2), pages 363-377.
    15. Tingley, Dustin & Yamamoto, Teppei & Hirose, Kentaro & Keele, Luke & Imai, Kosuke, 2014. "mediation: R Package for Causal Mediation Analysis," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 59(i05).
    16. Koller, Manuel, 2016. "robustlmm: An R Package for Robust Estimation of Linear Mixed-Effects Models," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 75(i06).
    17. Anbarci, Nejat & Escaleras, Monica & Register, Charles A., 2005. "Earthquake fatalities: the interaction of nature and political economy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(9-10), pages 1907-1933, September.
    18. Bell, Andrew & Jones, Kelvyn, 2015. "Explaining Fixed Effects: Random Effects Modeling of Time-Series Cross-Sectional and Panel Data," Political Science Research and Methods, Cambridge University Press, vol. 3(1), pages 133-153, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Oana-Ramona Socoliuc (Guriță) & Nicoleta Sîrghi & Dănuţ-Vasile Jemna & Mihaela David, 2022. "Corruption and Population Health in the European Union Countries—An Institutionalist Perspective," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(9), pages 1-20, April.
    2. Mohammad Reza Farzanegan & Hans Philipp Hofmann, 2021. "An Old Plug and a New Virus: Effect of Public Corruption on the Covid-19 Immunization Progress," CESifo Working Paper Series 9307, CESifo.
    3. Eiji Yamamura, 2014. "Impact of natural disaster on public sector corruption," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 161(3), pages 385-405, December.
    4. Eiji Yamamura, 2013. "Public sector corruption and the probability of technological disasters," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 233-255, August.
    5. Văidean, Viorela Ligia & Achim, Monica Violeta, 2022. "When more is less: Do information and communication technologies (ICTs) improve health outcomes? An empirical investigation in a non-linear framework," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    6. Yamamura, Eiji, 2011. "The changing effect of legal origin on death tolls in natural disasters from 1960 to 2008," MPRA Paper 33112, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Haichao Fan & Xiang Gao, 2017. "Domestic Creditor Rights and External Private Debt," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 127(606), pages 2410-2440, November.
    8. Oasis Kodila-Tedika & Simplice A. Asongu & Julio Mukendi Kayembe, 2016. "Middle Class in Africa: Determinants and Consequences," International Economic Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(4), pages 527-549, October.
    9. Yamamura, Eiji & Andrés, Antonio R., 2011. "Does corruption affect suicide? Empirical evidence from OECD countries," MPRA Paper 31622, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Corrado, Germana & Rossetti, Fiammetta, 2018. "Public corruption: A study across regions in Italy," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 40(6), pages 1126-1139.
    11. Chandan Sharma, 2021. "Does Corruption Sand The Wheels Of Financial Sector Development? Evidence From Global Panel Data," Journal of Financial Management, Markets and Institutions (JFMMI), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 9(02), pages 1-32, December.
    12. Rougier, Eric, 2016. "“Fire in Cairo”: Authoritarian–Redistributive Social Contracts, Structural Change, and the Arab Spring," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 148-171.
    13. Eiji Yamamura, 2012. "The Death Toll from Natural Disasters: The Role of Income, Geography and Institutions: Comment," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 32(2), pages 1545-1554.
    14. Welander, Anna & Lyttkens, Carl Hampus & Nilsson, Therese, 2014. "Globalization and Child Health in Developing Countries: The Role of Democracy," Working Paper Series 1016, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    15. Qiang Li & Lian An & Jing Xu & Mina Baliamoune-Lutz, 2018. "Corruption costs lives: evidence from a cross-country study," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 19(1), pages 153-165, January.
    16. Robin Burgess & Remi Jedwab & Edward Miguel & Ameet Morjaria & Gerard Padró i Miquel, 2015. "The Value of Democracy: Evidence from Road Building in Kenya," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(6), pages 1817-1851, June.
    17. Castelló-Climent, Amparo & Hidalgo-Cabrillana, Ana, 2012. "The role of educational quality and quantity in the process of economic development," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 391-409.
    18. Martin Gassebner & Jerg Gutmann & Stefan Voigt, 2016. "When to expect a coup d’état? An extreme bounds analysis of coup determinants," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 169(3), pages 293-313, December.
    19. Elisabetta Lodigiani & Sara Salomone, 2015. "Migration-induced Transfers of Norms. Political Empowerment?The case of Female Political Empowerment," Working Papers 2015:19, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    20. Anna Lo Prete, 2018. "Inequality and the finance you know: does economic literacy matter?," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 35(1), pages 183-205, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:348:y:2024:i:c:s0277953624002570. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.