Exploiting the Poor: Bureaucratic Corruption and Poverty in Africa

While extant research has focused on the causes and consequences of corruption at the macro-level, less effort has been devoted to understanding the micro-foundation of corruption. We argue that poor people are more likely to be victims of corrupt behavior by street-level bureaucrats as the poor often rely heavily on services provided by governments. We test this proposition using micro-level survey data from the Afrobarometer. Multilevel regressions across 18 countries show that poor people are much more prone to experience having to pay bribes to government officials.