Degree Name
Master of Arts
Graduate Program
Economics
Advisor
Morshed AKM
Abstract
This paper examines the relationship between corruption and pension coverage across Sub-Saharan Africa, where extending old-age income security remains a pressing developmental challenge. Using an unbalanced panel of 42 countries over 2000–2024, drawn from the Worldwide Governance Indicators, World Development Indicators, the International Labor Organization, and the World Bank's ASPIRE database, the study estimates the effect of the control of corruption on the share of the elderly receiving a pension. Pooled OLS, random effects, and two-way fixed effects estimators distinguish cross-country from within-country variation. Control of corruption is positively and significantly associated with coverage across cross-sectional specifications, with effects of roughly twelve to seventeen percentage points per one-unit improvement in the index, though the two-way fixed effects coefficient is positive but insignificant. A Hausman test confirms that between- and within-country relationships differ, indicating that corruption operates mainly as a structural determinant of the cross-national distribution of coverage. The findings suggest that anti-corruption reforms, particularly stronger beneficiary verification and disbursement systems, are necessary to expand pension coverage in the region.