Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/209573 
Year of Publication: 
2019
Series/Report no.: 
GLO Discussion Paper No. 432
Publisher: 
Global Labor Organization (GLO), Essen
Abstract: 
Corruption is pervasive, but we know little about its effects on individual lives. This paper examines whether living in a corrupt society has deleterious effects on health. Using individual-level data from 28 post-communist countries, we demonstrate that bribing for public services worsens self-assessed health. Unlike other studies, we account for endogeneity of bribery and show that bribing for any type of public service, not just for health services, has an adverse impact. We also find that bribery lowers the quality of services received. Moreover, there are potentially high indirect costs of bribery since, as we show, it comes at the expense of cutting food consumption. These findings suggest that corruption is a potentially important source behind the poor health outcomes in many developing countries.
Subjects: 
Bribery
Corruption
Health
Post-Communist Countries
JEL: 
I15
K42
D73
H11
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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