IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fem/femwpa/2008.54.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Corruption, Income Inequality, and Poverty in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Oguzhan C. Dincer

    (Illinois State University)

  • Burak Gunalp

    (Hacettepe University)

Abstract

In this study we analyze the effects of corruption on income inequality and poverty. Our analysis advances the existing literature in four ways. First, instead of using corruption indices assembled by various investment risk services, we use an objective measure of corruption: the number of public officials convicted in a state for crimes related to corruption. Second, we use all commonly used inequality and poverty measures including various Atkinson indexes, Gini index, standard deviation of the logarithms, relative mean deviation, coefficient of variation, and the poverty rate defined by the U.S. Census Bureau. Third, we minimize the problems which are likely to arise due to data incomparability by examining the differences in income inequality, and poverty across U.S. states. Finally, we exploit both time series and cross sectional variation in the data. We find robust evidence that an increase in corruption increases income inequality and poverty.

Suggested Citation

  • Oguzhan C. Dincer & Burak Gunalp, 2008. "Corruption, Income Inequality, and Poverty in the United States," Working Papers 2008.54, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    • Handle: RePEc:fem:femwpa:2008.54
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://feem-media.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/NDL2008-054.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ben Hamouda, Abderrazek, 2018. "La qualité de gouvernance et le triangle croissance-inégalité-pauvreté [The relationship between growth-inequality-poverty triangle and governance]," MPRA Paper 92207, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Dobson, Stephen & Ramlogan-Dobson, Carlyn, 2012. "Why is Corruption Less Harmful to Income Inequality in Latin America?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(8), pages 1534-1545.
    3. Douzounet Mallaye & Gaëlle Tatiana Timba & Urbain Thierry Yogo, 2015. "Oil Rent and Income Inequality in Developing Economies: Are They Friends or Foes?," CERDI Working papers halshs-01100843, HAL.
    4. Sazzadul Arefin, 2019. "Geographic Endowment, Corruption, and Economic Development," Business and Economic Research, Macrothink Institute, vol. 9(1), pages 1-32, March.
    5. Mongi Lassoued, 2021. "Control of corruption, microfinance, and income inequality in MENA countries: evidence from panel data," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 1(7), pages 1-19, July.
    6. Sulemana, Iddisah & Kpienbaareh, Daniel, 2018. "An empirical examination of the relationship between income inequality and corruption in Africa," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 27-42.
    7. Mark Edem Kunawotor & Godfred Alufar Bokpin & Charles Barnor, 2020. "Drivers of income inequality in Africa: Does institutional quality matter?," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 32(4), pages 718-729, December.
    8. Salah Alnahdi, 2020. "The Impact of Corruption on Healthcare Services: Empirical Evidence from the MENA Region," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 10(5), pages 8-15.
    9. Douzounet Mallaye & Gaëlle Tatiana Timba & Urbain Thierry Yogo, 2015. "Oil Rent and Income Inequality in Developing Economies: Are They Friends or Foes?," Working Papers halshs-01100843, HAL.
    10. Paulo Peixoto & Vítor João Pereira Domingues Martinho & Paulo Mourao, 2022. "Corruption and Inflation in Agricultural Production: The Problem of the Chicken and the Egg," Economies, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-33, October.
    11. Ambar, Rabnawaz, 2015. "Corruption, Inequality and Economic Growth," MPRA Paper 70375, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2015.
    12. Muhammad Shahid Hassan & Samra Bukhari & Noman Arshed, 2020. "Competitiveness, governance and globalization: What matters for poverty alleviation?," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 22(4), pages 3491-3518, April.
    13. Lu, Juan & Li, He, 2023. "The impact of environmental corruption on green consumption: A quantitative analysis based on China's Judicial Document Network and Baidu Index," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    14. Younes Nademi, 2018. "The resource curse and income inequality in Iran," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 52(3), pages 1159-1172, May.
    15. Marco Pani, 2011. "Hold your nose and vote: corruption and public decisions in a representative democracy," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 148(1), pages 163-196, July.
    16. Dwiputri, Inayati Nuraini & Arsyad, Lincolin & Pradiptyo, Rimawan, 2018. "The corruption-income inequality trap: A study of Asian countries," Economics Discussion Papers 2018-81, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    17. Nicholas Apergis & Oguzhan Dincer & James Payne, 2010. "The relationship between corruption and income inequality in U.S. states: evidence from a panel cointegration and error correction model," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 145(1), pages 125-135, October.
    18. Dagim Tadesse Bekele, 2020. "Effect of Macroeconomic, Demographic, and Governance Factors on Income Inequality of Selected sub-Saharan Africa Countries," Journal of Economic Development, Environment and People, Alliance of Central-Eastern European Universities, vol. 9(1), pages 60-70, September.
    19. Humna Ahsan & Keith Blackburn, 2015. "Human capital and income distribution in a model of corruption," Centre for Growth and Business Cycle Research Discussion Paper Series 208, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    20. Julius Idialu Ikharehon & Nosa Omoregie, 2015. "Corruption and Poverty Challenges in Nigeria," Indian Journal of Commerce and Management Studies, Educational Research Multimedia & Publications,India, vol. 6(1), pages 91-97, January.
    21. Kodila Tedika, Oasis, 2012. "Consequences De La Corruption : Panorama Empirique [Consequences of Corruption : Empirical survey]," MPRA Paper 41482, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    22. Ferreira de Mendonça, Helder & Martins Esteves, Diogo, 2014. "Income inequality in Brazil: What has changed in recent years?," Revista CEPAL, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Corruption; Income Inequality; Poverty;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D73 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Bureaucracy; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations; Corruption
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:fem:femwpa:2008.54. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Alberto Prina Cerai (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/feemmit.html .

    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.