This presentation was given by Professor Bo Rothstein at the Launch of the World Social Science Report - Challenging Inequalities: Pathways to a Just World. It looks at the way inequality is related to corruption - and what can be done about it. Bo Rothstein is one of over 100 leading social scientists who've contributed to the World Social Science Report 2016. You can download Bo's article open access here:http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002458/245881e.pdf Find out more and download the full report here: http://en.unesco.org/wssr2016 The World Social Science Report 2016 is prepared by the International Social Science Council (ISSC) in collaboration with the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), and co-published with UNESCO. The launch was generously hosted by the Swedish Secretariat for Environmental Earth System Sciences (SSEESS), which is an Associate Member of ISSC.

1. Bo Rothstein
Blavatnik School of Government
and
Nuffield College
University of Oxford
Inequality and Corruption

3. Regional difference in QoG in Europe
Blue/black = high QoG – Yellow/green=low QoG

4. Level of Democracy and Human
Development Index

5. Quality of Government and Human
Development

8. What works against inequality
• Answer: Public provision of basic
resources through universal social policies
• Health care, education, public
transportation, support to families, etc.
• Universal social policies create more
redistribution than selective ones
• However, such policies will only be
supported if quality of institutions is high

9. Trust in institutions and social
solidarity: A huge leap of faith?
• Can your trust that the state be able to fairly
collect enough fees/taxes?
• Can you trust that the state will handle the money
in a responsible way or will policies be drowned
in corruption etc.
• Can you trust that the state will be able to
deliver?
• Can you trust that the state will deliver in an
acceptable way?
• Can you trust that the state will be able to handle
abuse or overuse?

10. Trust and institutions
• Selective social policies often create
suspicion regarding fairness in
implementation
• Means testing leads to negative
stereotyping
• Universal social policies are based on
equal treatment and thus less bureaucratic
discretion and intrusion
• Produces a sense of equality of
opportunity and institutional fairness

11. Empirical results: Country level
• The effect of left cabinets on the level of
welfare state effort is dependent on the
level of quality in government
• A country with the best possible level of
QoG will spend 21 percentage more of its
GDP on the welfare state compared to a
country with the lowest possible level of
QoG

12. Empirical results: Individual
level
• A person who is in favour of more socio-
economic equality, but who lives in a
country where (s)he perceives there is low
quality of government, prefers lower taxes
and less social spending
• The similar type of person who lives in a
country where s(he) perceives the quality
of government institutions to be OK, is
willing to pay higher taxes for more social
spending

13. Corruption and Inequality: The
take home lessons
• Corruption does not only work as an extra
tax for poor people
• Corruption will also make it much harder to
get broad support for universal social
policies
• Corruption and low quality of government
is thus probably ”the enemy number one”
for alleviating poverty and inequality