Poverty reduction and democratization : new cross-country evidence
Author(s)
Wietzke, Frank-BorgeKeywords
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)poverty
inequality
SDG1:No Poverty
SDG10:Reduced Inequalities
GE Subjects
Development ethics
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The rapid decrease in absolute poverty across the developing world has received much attention. However, there have been few systematic attempts to analyse the political consequences of these developments. This article builds on the improved availability of household income data from developing countries to document a small but statistically significant impact of lagged poverty rates on a range of democracy indicators. The results hold across a battery of sensitivity and robustness tests. I also show that poverty reduction has a stronger effect on democracy than alternative predictors that are more widely used in the democratic regime transition and consolidation literature, such as average income and relative inequality (the Gini index). However, I find weaker effects of poverty on indicators of government quality and a declining influence of poverty reduction on democracy over time. These results point to more structural obstacles to democratic consolidation in lower-income regions, such as a tendency by populist leaders to exploit the economic grievances of vulnerable lower-middle classes.Date
2019Type
ArticleDOI
10.1080/13510347.2019.1575369Copyright/License
Taylor and Francis Group (SDG Online collection)Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1080/13510347.2019.1575369
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- Creative Commons
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Taylor and Francis Group (SDG Online collection)