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Essay on Corruption Is The Root Cause Of Poverty

Students are often asked to write an essay on Corruption Is The Root Cause Of Poverty in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

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100 Words Essay on Corruption Is The Root Cause Of Poverty

Introduction.

Corruption is a dishonest act by those in power. This includes bribery, fraud, or embezzlement. Poverty, on the other hand, is a state of being extremely poor. The two are closely linked. This essay explains why corruption is the root cause of poverty.

The Cycle of Corruption and Poverty

Corruption leads to poverty because it affects economic growth. When leaders steal public funds, they reduce the money available for development. This leads to poor infrastructure, low-quality education, and inadequate health services. These conditions result in poverty.

Corruption and Inequality

Corruption also increases inequality. The rich become richer while the poor become poorer. Corrupt leaders often favor their friends and family, leaving the majority poor. This unequal distribution of resources leads to poverty.

Corruption and Poor Governance

Poor governance is another result of corruption. When leaders are corrupt, they ignore the needs of the people. They fail to provide basic services like clean water, healthcare, and education. Without these services, people remain poor.

In conclusion, corruption is a major cause of poverty. It creates a cycle of poverty, increases inequality, and results in poor governance. To fight poverty, we must first fight corruption.

250 Words Essay on Corruption Is The Root Cause Of Poverty

Corruption is a serious problem in many countries. It is an act of dishonesty by people in power to gain personal benefits. This essay explains how corruption is the main reason for poverty.

Corruption and Public Funds

Corruption often leads to misuse of public funds. People in power can take money meant for public services, like schools and hospitals, for their own use. This means less money is available to help people in need, leading to poverty.

Effect on Economy

Corruption also harms the economy. When corrupt officials demand bribes, it discourages businesses. Fewer businesses mean fewer jobs, which can lead to higher poverty rates.

Impact on Society

Corruption creates a society where dishonesty is rewarded and honesty is punished. This can make poverty worse, as honest people may find it harder to get jobs or services.

In conclusion, corruption is a root cause of poverty. It takes money away from public services, hurts the economy, and creates a dishonest society. To fight poverty, we must first fight corruption.

500 Words Essay on Corruption Is The Root Cause Of Poverty

Corruption is a major problem in many parts of the world. It is like a disease that harms society. One of the biggest impacts of corruption is poverty. This essay will explain how corruption is the root cause of poverty.

What is Corruption?

Corruption is when people in power behave dishonestly for their own gain. This can mean taking bribes, stealing money, or not following rules. It is a problem because it means that resources are not shared fairly. This leads to many other problems, one of which is poverty.

Corruption and Poverty

Corruption can cause poverty in many ways. Firstly, when government officials are corrupt, they may take money that is meant for public services. This means that schools, hospitals, and roads do not get the funding they need. This can lead to a lack of education, poor health, and a lack of jobs, all of which can cause poverty.

Secondly, corruption can discourage businesses. If a business owner has to pay bribes to operate, they may decide it is not worth it. This can lead to fewer businesses and fewer jobs, which again can cause poverty.

Thirdly, corruption can lead to inequality. If the rich and powerful can avoid paying taxes by being corrupt, this means that there is less money for public services. This can lead to a bigger gap between the rich and the poor, and more poverty.

Examples of Corruption Leading to Poverty

There are many examples of corruption leading to poverty. In some countries, corrupt leaders have stolen billions of dollars. This money could have been used to improve education, healthcare, and infrastructure. Instead, it ended up in the pockets of a few people, while the majority remained poor.

In other cases, corruption has led to a lack of investment. Businesses are scared off by the high levels of corruption, leading to fewer jobs and more poverty.

In conclusion, corruption is a major cause of poverty. It leads to a lack of public services, discourages businesses, and increases inequality. It is important that we fight against corruption if we want to reduce poverty. This can be done through education, stronger laws, and by holding those in power accountable for their actions.

To sum up, corruption is like a weed that strangles the growth of a healthy society. If we want to see a world without poverty, we must first tackle the problem of corruption.

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How Poverty Is a Direct Result of Corruption

H ead to any of the most disadvantaged places in America and ask local leaders what is holding their community back, and invariably you will hear a story about the local poor. They don’t want to work, don’t behave like they should, and have become dependent on government welfare programs. This story is centuries old. Indeed, the narrative of the shiftless poor inhabits a perpetual space in the nation’s collective consciousness.

These days, though, the biggest story about welfare cheats isn’t about the poor making off with a few dollars in undeserved aid. Any such fraud is dwarfed by the actions of Nancy New, a nonprofit leader in Mississippi, and John Davis, director of the state’s welfare agency, who, from 2017 to 2020, scammed a government program meant to help impoverished children in Mississippi, the nation’s poorest state, to the tune of nearly $80 million. It’s the largest public corruption scandal in the state’s history.

Rather than alleviating poverty through cash aid, child care, or job training, New and Davis used New’s nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center to line their own pockets and those of a number of celebrity athletes, among other dubious schemes. Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Anna Wolfe uncovered the scheme, but the whole thing might not have made national headlines but for the involvement of Super Bowl champion quarterback Brett Favre . Favre was paid $1.1 million by New’s nonprofit for speaking events that, according to Mississippi state auditor Shad White, did not happen. Another $5 million went to build a volleyball stadium at Favre’s alma mater, the University of Southern Mississippi, with the justification that the funds would be used to host events for underserved youth. To date only one such event has occurred.

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While the Mississippi story is particularly shocking, our five years of research in America’s most disadvantaged places has shown that government corruption is disturbingly common. We saw firsthand how members of the local elite exploited the community’s meager resources—even aid meant to help the most vulnerable—through corruption of all kinds, a pattern enduring across generations. Through hundreds of interviews with local leaders and ordinary citizens alike in our nation’s most disadvantaged places—clustered in central Appalachia, South Texas, and the historic Cotton Belt—we learned that many people assume that the poor are eager to take advantage of the dole unless proven otherwise, a guilty-until-proven-innocent framework. Yet the same people who are eager to blame the poor will often discount a case like New’s, dismissing her as just one “bad apple.”

Take Crystal City, Texas, which has a poverty rate of close to 30%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. A major obstacle to bringing new jobs to town that might drive that poverty rate down is that the city is still reeling from 2016, when the mayor, the city manager, and three current or former members of Crystal City’s city council were convicted in a conspiracy and bribery scheme. Yet another council member had already gone down on human trafficking charges, leaving only one member of the city council to run the town. The broader region has seen an economic boom from fracking in recent years, bringing in new hotels and restaurants along with new jobs. Yet Crystal City has missed out on this surge completely. Residents we spoke to complained that local government was largely non-functional when it should have been vying for a piece of the pie.

Read More: America Looks at Poverty All Wrong

In Clay County, Kentucky, which has a poverty rate of nearly 36%, The City of Manchester’s long-serving mayor Daugh White and several of his cronies pleaded guilty to racketeering and conspiracy charges in 2007 for pursuing kickbacks from companies bidding on city contracts. Just before White’s demise, a set of reformers decided to take him on. But in their efforts to unseat White and his coalition, the reformers employed an age-old eastern Kentucky tactic—vote buying. After a federal RICO investigation, they also found themselves in the clink.

Our government must find new ways to get resources to where they are most needed. Since at least the New Deal, there has been an expectation that aid from the government will flow not directly to the needy, but to local governments, who will distribute resources for the betterment of their community. While we met many honest and well-meaning local officials through our research, this approach is a recipe for corruption because all too often the officials responsible for delivering this aid to the poor are self-dealing people. A federally administered expanded Child Tax Credit, such as the one briefly implemented by the Biden administration during the Covid-19 pandemic, is one way to get aid directly to poor families while circumventing the open pockets of local elites. Targeted funding to local governments should be made in full recognition that especially in these places, the investments are at risk of not getting to where they are most needed. Government agencies must build in safeguards to avoid graft.

A broader problem in getting resources to the places of greatest need is that for decades, the government has invested in places through policies by soliciting proposals from the communities themselves. While this may sound like a good thing, rarely is the process driven by experts in regional development. Instead, local elites—with their own self-interest—typically control the undertaking. Expertise, not cronyism, is needed to determine which strategies are most likely to lead to meaningful gains.

In many of America’s most disadvantaged regions, corruption has exerted a chokehold that has kept local communities from thriving. In the words of John Kerry, civic corruption is “an opportunity destroyer because it discourages honest and accountable investment; it makes businesses more expensive to operate; it drives up the cost of public services for local taxpayers”—a toxic alchemy. Deeply disadvantaged communities cannot thrive until more people scrutinize the actions of the local elites who run them.

Correction: This article originally said Nancy New's nonprofit was called Mississippi First. It is called the Mississippi Community Education Center.

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10 Common Root Causes of Poverty

Poverty is a global problem. According to the World Bank in 2015 , over 700 million people were living on less than $1.90 a day. While that represents a milestone (in 1990, it was over one billion ) that’s still way too many people. That number also includes extreme poverty that is defined by the UN as “a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information. It depends not only on income but also on access to services.”

What causes poverty in the first place? Here are ten root causes:

#1. Lack of good jobs/job growth

This is the first reason a lot of people think about. When you don’t have a good job, you aren’t getting a good income. In many countries, traditional jobs like farming are disappearing. The Democratic Republic of Congo is a good example, where most of the population live in rural areas stripped of natural resources from years of colonialism. Half of the DRC live below the poverty line. Even in nations like the United States where many people do have jobs, those jobs aren’t paying enough. According to the Economic Policy Institute , large groups of workers with full-time, year-round employment are still below federal poverty guidelines.

#2: Lack of good education

The second root cause of poverty is a lack of education. Poverty is a cycle and without education, people aren’t able to better their situations. According to UNESCO , over 170 million people could be free of extreme poverty if they only had basic reading skills. However, in many areas of the world, people aren’t getting educated. The reasons vary. Often times, families need kids to work, there aren’t schools close by, or girls aren’t being educated because of sexism and discrimination.

#3: Warfare/conflict

Conflict has a huge impact on poverty. In times of war, everything stops. Productivity suffers as well as a country’s GDP. It’s very difficult to get things going again as foreign businesses and countries won’t want to invest. For families and individuals, war and conflict can make it impossible to stay in one place. It’s also very common for women to become the primary breadwinners, and they deal with many barriers like sexual violence and discrimination.

#4: Weather/climate change

According to the World Bank , climate change has the power to impoverish 100 million people in the next decade or so. We know climate change causes drought, floods, and severe storms, and that can take down successful countries while pulling poor ones down even further. Recovering is extremely difficult, as well, especially for agricultural communities where they barely have enough to feed themselves, let alone prepare for the next harvest year.

#5: Social injustice

Whether it’s gender discrimination, racism, or other forms of social injustice, poverty follows. People who are victims of social injustice struggle with getting a good education, the right job opportunities, and access to resources that can lift them out of poverty. The United Nations Social Policy and Development Division identifies “inequalities in income distribution and access to productive resources, basic social services, opportunities” and more as a cause for poverty. Groups like women, religious minorities, and racial minorities are the most vulnerable.

#6: Lack of food and water

Without access to basic essentials like food and water, it’s impossible to get out of poverty’s cycle. Everything a person does will be about getting food and water. They can’t save any money because it all goes towards their daily needs. When there isn’t enough sustenance, they won’t have the energy to work. They are also way more likely to get sick, which makes their financial situation even worse.

#7: Lack of infrastructure

Infrastructure includes roads, bridges, the internet, public transport, and more. When a community or families are isolated, they have to spend a lot of money, time, and energy getting to places. Without good roads, traveling takes forever. Without public transport, it may be next to impossible to get a good job or even to the store. Infrastructure connects people to the services and resources they need to better their financial and life situation, and without it, things don’t get better.

#8: Lack of government support

To combat many of the issues we’ve described, the government needs to be involved. However, many governments are either unable or unwilling to serve the poor. This might mean failing to provide (or cutting) social welfare programs, redirecting funds away from those who need it, failing to build good infrastructure, or actively persecuting the population. If a government fails to meet the needs of the poor, the poor will most likely stay that way.

#9: Lack of good healthcare

People who are poor are more likely to suffer from bad health, and those with bad health are more likely to be poor. This is because healthcare is often too expensive or inaccessible to those who need it. Without money for medicine and treatment, the poor have to make really tough decisions, and usually essentials like food take priority. People who are sick get sicker, and then they can’t work, which makes the situation even more dire. If people do seek treatment, the cost often ruins their finances. It’s a vicious cycle.

#10: High costs

The last root of poverty is simple: stuff costs too much. Even the basics can be too expensive. According to stats from the World Food Programme, the poorest households in the world are spending 60-80% of their incomes on food. Food prices are also very unpredictable in certain areas, so when they rise, the poor have to keep cutting out other essentials. Housing is another essential that is rising. Global house markets have been climbing, according to the International Monetary Fund. Income growth, however, has not.

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About the author, emmaline soken-huberty.

Emmaline Soken-Huberty is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon. She started to become interested in human rights while attending college, eventually getting a concentration in human rights and humanitarianism. LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, and climate change are of special concern to her. In her spare time, she can be found reading or enjoying Oregon’s natural beauty with her husband and dog.

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• v.9(1); 2017

Social impacts of corruption upon community resilience and poverty

James lewis.

1 Datum International, South Gloucestershire, United Kingdom

Corruption at all levels of all societies is a behavioural consequence of power and greed. With no rulebook, corruption is covert, opportunistic, repetitive and powerful, reliant upon dominance, fear and unspoken codes: a significant component of the ‘quiet violence’. Descriptions of financial corruption in China, Italy and Africa lead into a discussion of ‘grand’, ‘political’ and ‘petty’ corruption. Social consequences are given emphasis but elude analysis; those in Bangladesh and the Philippines are considered against prerequisites for resilience. People most dependent upon self-reliance are most prone to its erosion by exploitation, ubiquitous impediments to prerequisites of resilience – latent abilities to ‘accommodate and recover’ and to ‘change in order to survive’. Rarely spoken of to those it does not dominate, for long-term effectiveness, sustainability and reliability, eradication of corrupt practices should be prerequisite to initiatives for climate change, poverty reduction, disaster risk reduction and resilience.

Résumé

Corruption , existing at all levels of all societies in varying degrees, is a behavioural consequence of power and greed in contexts of inadequate governance. With no published rulebook or formula with which to comply, corruption is covert, repetitively opportunistic and powerfully reliant upon dominance and fear within unwritten and unspoken codes. It is therefore an understatement that, consequently, corrupt practices do not readily lend themselves to scientific analysis. Instead, investigation of its consequences amongst the poor has to be necessarily ad hoc and gathered from relatively few published sources which have become available over time. For the purposes of this assessment of its social impacts upon resilience and poverty, extracts have been gathered of its variety of methods and pervasive consequences; as with corruption itself, its procedures are evasive and do not readily lend themselves to formal research.

Literature on the social impacts of corruption is limited, a definitive analysis of corruption and its social consequences being not, as yet, a practicable undertaking. This short contribution reflects some preliminary investigation of the social impacts of corrupt practices upon the poorer sectors of societies, where and when accessible literature has ensued.

Corrupt practices amongst high level political, commercial and industrial dealings, rightly receiving media attention, may become the commencement of long-term trickle-down consequences for the poor which, at society’s lower levels, are unlikely to attract either scientific or media notice. Whilst the scale of corruption on China, Italy and Africa here receive mention, the impacts of corruption upon the poor of these and other societies in Africa, Bangladesh and the Philippines, for example, reveal social consequences which are here examined and considered against required prerequisites for resilience. Those societies and communities most reliant upon their own resilience to crises of any kind are also the most prone to its erosion by consequences of opportunistic control and exploitation.

An introductory section outlines descriptions of how corruption and its effects are contrary to basic needs for resilience, focussing on erosion of personal capacities and abilities; its significance to poverty and development within less-developed countries being indicated. Detailed analysis of social prerequisites for resilience is described with reference to internationally adopted definitions as a basis for discussion of their interpretation and comparison, both historic and recent. Some worldwide corrupt practices and attitudes to them are described in contexts of resilience theory, its reality and its consequences. Discussion of economic and social consequences of corruption is based upon Transparency International definitions and their shortcomings. Conclusions highlight a relationship between corruption, poverty and their impacts of natural hazards and causes of disasters. Depletion of national incomes by corruption relates to causes of poverty and the need for removal of corrupt practices at all social levels. Improved quality of life may then permit emergence of required prerequisites for resilience.

Introduction

Investigated and published more often as a financial issue (e.g. Drury et al. 2006 ; Klein 2007 ; Transparency International 2016a , 2016b ; Zucman 2015 ), corruption in its various guises imposes wide-ranging social consequences, especially when established long-term to the extent of having become ‘normal’ and when its networks, influences and consequences reach community and domestic contexts.

Corruption is a cause of low development (Zucman 2015 :34–55) and exacerbates poverty where poverty prevails; corruption, therefore, needs to be included amongst causes of the consequences of poverty, such as debt, incapacity, mental despair and despondency (Ray 1986 ). Within influences as powerful as poverty, corrupt practices, in many forms and over long periods of time, may affect all and every exchange or transaction at every level of society, imposing additional insidious and negative influences upon the emergence of resilience. With little or no hard evidence for outsiders and rarely spoken of to those it does not dominate, in its numerous forms, the invisible, outwardly imperceptible practices of corruption are a cause of debilitating, pervasive and penetrating impacts upon day to day behaviours, ways of life and of well-being (Chabal & Daloz 1999 ; Hartmann & Boyce 1990 ; Hoogvelt 1976 ; Lewis 2008b , 2011b , 2011c ; Ray 1986 ).

Whatever resource and effort may be introduced for its purpose, resilience may be impeded, or may not materialise, where indigenous systems of control prevail and where social capacities are consequently inadequate.

Prevailing incapacities may have been caused by a variety of circumstances, such as: long-term political repression (Lewis 2013a ), ill-considered occupation or re-occupation of hazardous and damaged locations (Lewis 2013b ), direct experiences of catastrophe, deaths, injury, shock or other consequences, or long-term poverty of a degree to so seriously deplete initiative and well-being as to induce physical and mental inertia (Symons 1839 ). Poverty is commonly assumed to be because of a country being poor whilst, in reality, poverty exists in most societies (Lewis & Lewis 2014 ). Any or all of these consequences may have been, or may yet be, experienced over long periods of time, separately or simultaneously, repeatedly or continuously.

For the emergence and organisation of resilience in any context, prerequisites of individual capacity and ability (United Nations: International Strategy for Disaster Reduction [UN/ISDR] 2009 ) are identified as being necessary. Without capacity and without individual qualities ‘to reduce negative consequences’ of disasters and for application to ‘long-term strategies for societal change’ (UN/ISDR 2009 ), it is difficult to envisage how community and organisational resilience could gestate, emerge or formulate. In any context and at any level, if individuals are not resilient then how would community resilience come to prevail?

Many less developed countries are internally perceived as most corrupt (Transparency International 2016b ) and some of the most corrupt are amongst those most vulnerable to natural hazards; Bangladesh, Nepal and the Philippines, for example. For the 20-year period 1996–2015, almost half of all deaths because of all natural hazards occurred in low-income countries (Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters [CRED]/United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction [UNISDR] 2016a ). In contexts such as these, it is pertinent to ask: how much is a country’s apparent poverty because of corruption in governance and commercial mismanagement, and how many basic components of resilience, such as well-being, capacity and ability could have, indeed should have, been induced and supported in the name of indigenous normal good governance and social development?

Social prerequisites for resilience

Resilience has been defined as:

The ability of a system, community or society exposed to hazards to resist, absorb, accommodate and recover from the effects of a hazard in a timely and efficient manner, including through the preservation and restoration of its essential basic structures and functions. (UN/ISDR 2009 :n.p.)

A definition which may be read either as an assumption that ability exists or as a caution that it may not (Lewis 2013a ).

Resilience theory originated in ‘late 20th century American cities’ (Davoudi et al. 2017 ), in which ‘radical self-sufficiency’, autonomy and ‘self-dependence’ are facts of life for all but the poorest (Lewis 2013a ). What is not known is what kind of ‘community or society’, or what personal, local and national resources, were assumed as the basis of its definition.

Nonetheless, requirements for resilience have come to assume a universal capability of people to absorb stress and to transform and adapt to managing risks. In short, to deal with crises and disasters, people’s capacity being dependent upon demographic, social, cultural, economic and political factors which may vary. Resilient societies are expected to be able to overcome the impact upon them of natural hazards ‘either through maintaining their pre-disaster social fabric, or through accepting marginal or larger change in order to survive’ (UN/ISDR 2009 :n.p.). Required is the capacity to adapt ability in the creation of capability for recovery (Wisner 2016 ). Thus, the concept of resilience is linked to the concept of change (Manyena 2006 ) which may be technological, economic, behavioural, social, cultural (Gaillard 2007 ) or political (Lewis 2013a ), but in conditions of pervasive poverty, there may not be the ability to ‘accommodate and recover’, or for ‘maintenance of social fabric’; least of all the ability, capacity and capability to ‘change in order to survive’ and ‘in a timely and efficient manner’ (UN/ISDR 2009 :n.p.).

The UN/ISDR definition goes further in recognising that resilience ‘is determined by the degree to which the community has the necessary resources and is capable of organising itself both prior to and during times of need’ (UN/ISDR 2009 :n.p.). Consequently, ‘resilience’, once a characteristic of individuals, has come to be widely applied to preventive motivations as well as to post-disaster contexts, and to being relevant to drought, flood, climate, infrastructure, industrial complexes, businesses, cities, communities and administrations and governments and their politically stated objectives (e.g. Resilience-Scan 2016 ). Poverty and resilience cannot be assumed to go together (Boubacar et al. 2017 ); moreover, in realities of the aftermath of any catastrophe, whether or not in conditions of prevailing poverty, is it not more than likely that ‘ability’ may be severely depleted or may not exist at all (Lewis 2013a )? Resilience theory is said to risk becoming ‘another carrier of neoliberal ideologies, politics and practices with negative implications for social justice and democracy’ (Davoudi et al. 2017 :n.p.).

External initiatives applied as preliminaries towards achievement of community resilience over time, for example, by the improvement of living conditions, healthcare and education as described in detail from Bangladesh (Ahmed et al. 2016 ), may assist contexts of socially comprehensive resilience in the short-term. Focus, however, on localised and current conditions may obscure suspected but hidden causes of those conditions and the consequent need for their cessation and prevention; they may be direct or indirect consequences of questionable influences or of corrupt governance nationally and locally (Lewis & Kelman 2012 ).

Notwithstanding inculcation prior to crises to achieve the social capacity resilience requires, capacity may be annihilated or severely depleted in ensuing catastrophe and its aftermath. Despondency, not resilience, may become the reality, expressing not ability but inert disability. Resilience may theoretically pre-exist as a basic human quality but cannot be assumed to prevail regardless of realities of physical, mental and psychological incapacities, especially in contexts of poverty.

Present in any society at any time (Lewis & Lewis 2014 ), an early analysis of poverty in Scotland, France, Belgium, Austria and Switzerland (Symons 1839 :147–148) realised that poverty has ‘… the same effect on the mind that drunkenness has upon the body’ and that poverty was:

… a main instrument in the debasement of mankind … It is not only the parent of ignorance, but it is the greater barrier to enlightenment. When a man’s whole faculties are strained to the utmost from sunrise to sunset to procure a miserable subsistence, he has neither the leisure, aptitude nor desire for information … (pp. 147–148)

It could be assumed from this description that the sufferer would not have had capacity for resilience.

Fifty-three years later, Friedrich Engels ( [1892] 2009 ) wrote of England:

Everything that the proletarian can do to improve his position is but a drop in the ocean compared with the floods of varying chances to which he is exposed, over which he has not the slightest control. He is the passive subject of all possible combinations of circumstances … (p. 144)

It may be impractical to assume resilience where, for example, many populations are striven by conflict and warfare, millions of people are on the move as refugees and migrants, where millions more are in abject poverty and more directly where people are immediate and longer-term victims of catastrophe. Peace and stability may have been achieved in the aftermath of similar experiences but populations may have been left in fear of recurrence, a fear not conducive to the emergence of ability (Lewis 2013a ; Lewis, Kelman & Lewis 2011e ) and a condition which may last for many years.

Whilst communities may be, or may become resilient, they may continue to be vulnerable and at high risk (Sudmeier-Rieux 2014 ), continuingly prevalent causes of their vulnerability (Lewis & Kelman 2010 ) having been bypassed and disregarded by priorities for achieving resilience. Whereas destruction and damage are described in terms of physical impacts, these may transfer as mental, emotional, social and economic impacts upon individuals and communities. For some time, primary resources of resilience, such as capabilities of creativity, energy and leadership, may therefore be scarce commodities. Resilience anywhere will be dependent upon conditions that prevailed before disaster as well as those created by it and upon programmes for development responsive to potential contingencies of environmental hazards and disasters (Lewis 2013b ). Prescribed characteristics of resilience rarely refer to preceding contexts (e.g. Twigg 2007 ), some least positive contexts being described by Lewis and Kelman ( 2012 ).

Resilience may not, therefore, emerge ‘on demand’, commensurately comparable with the origins of catastrophe from whatever source. This would require a different kind of resilience, not on-the-spot reactions to chaos but one that recognises resilience as a long-term process more compatibly aware of political, social and economic causative processes of inequality, vulnerability and poverty (e.g. Lewis 2013a ), of which the social, as well as economic, consequences of corruption and its associated practices are a significant cause.

But stable, equable, fair and considerate communities and their regional and national administrations are a rarity; poverty, expressed according to a country’s median income, exists virtually in all countries as, in its varying degrees and practices, does corruption (Transparency International 2016b ). Where politicians appear to be in power to facilitate their own incomes and lax administrative systems facilitate them to do so, corruption becomes a cause of poverty, a major impediment to equality and the ‘worm-in-the-bud’ of resilience.

Some economic and social consequences of corruption

Corruption, as ‘the abuse of entrusted power for private gain’, has been classified as ‘grand’, ‘political’ and ‘petty’, depending on the amounts of money lost and the sector of governance in which it occurs (Transparency International 2016a ). International scales of corruption, reviewed annually, are based upon internal perceptions of corruption as it is indigenously observed and experienced, a methodology by which it is not possible to compare one perception with another or to know how they were arrived at. This means that whilst corrupt behaviours of politicians or large corporations are reported by the media, they may or may not influence those perceptions upon which international comparisons are based. The international definitions and comparisons by Transparency International are nevertheless a principal comparative scale of corruption and its definitions.

Most corrupt practices operate on, or create, a hierarchical scale of trading, a system that ensures that costs to top-level payers of bribes may be expected to be reimbursed by the receipt of bribes from others, those lower on the scale being recipients of backhanders to them for favours given. Payments would be expected and reimbursed similarly downwards to scales of petty corruption. That socially lowest payers have no-one upon which to claim is how millions of people find themselves in endless poverty – beholden and indebted victims for further exploitation by those richer and more powerful, at whatever level, than themselves. The poor become poorer to the advantage of the rich and poverty and inequality are perpetuated. Realities of corrupt practices upon those already in poverty cannot simply be classed as ‘petty’.

Of Africa, Chabal and Daloz ( 1999 ) argue in support of corruption being ‘the norm … constituting a substantial resource’ (Chabal & Daloz:xxi), taking the view that there has always existed a wide range of activities, inclusive of corruption, which, although illicit from a strictly constitutional or legal point of view, have been regarded as legitimate by the bulk of population (Chabal & Daloz:79). They emphasise however that corruption affects all social strata ‘from billionaires to the lowliest functionary’. Consequently, dichotomy between ‘high’ and ‘low’ or ‘small-’ and ‘large-’ scale corruption is not a determinant factor; neither are differences between financial malpractice, illegal commissions, small graft, open abuse of power, and petty pilfering. Nor do these authors believe some forms of corruption are more reprehensible than others, all forms of corruption being part of an interconnected whole (Chabal & Daloz:98).

Others (e.g. Hoogvelt 1976 ) see corruption as ‘the only means of integrating marginal groups into a disjointed social system’ (Hoogvelt 1976 :132) but where that is the case, corruption should not be allowed to be a licence for social injustice by forcefully keeping in power undeserving elites (Hoogvelt 1976 :137).

Grand corruption in governments’ higher echelons (Transparency International 2016a ), necessarily filters down, with its consequences, throughout all functions of all societies. Politicians and commercial operators, privately and corruptly, are known to have siphoned collectively enormous amounts of money, much of it from development funding, often from their own disaster-prone countries and very often into private bank accounts in the countries that were the origin of the aid (Ndikumana & Boyce 2011 ).

Known as ‘illicit financial flows’ and merged with corruption because of their secrecy, tax evasion and avoidance, and with sources possibly related to more strictly defined corruption, dishonest transactions on a huge scale (Zucman 2015 :34–55) have emerged as evidence of why some countries have remained ‘less-developed’. Money, illicitly taken from external funding intended for development purposes, is a likely cause of reduced domestic investment in basic needs of housing, sanitation, health and education, an explanation of why poverty has prevailed as the principal cause of vulnerability (Lewis 2015 ) and its associated disaster losses and social incapacities, and why such issues have not been matters of development priority by some national governments and indigenous organisations.

A report from the Philippines (Rey 2016 ) concludes that, from 1960 to 2011, approximately $410.5 billion left that country in ‘illicit financial flows’; a figure stated as being 154 times the national budget for health, 52 times that for social protection, 39 times that for education and 25 times that for infrastructure for the same period.

The overall cost to developing countries between 2000 and 2008, of corruption and trade mispricing (trade as a vehicle of monetary transfer), was approximately $6.5 trillion (Kar & Curcio 2011 ), a subsequent United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report indicating that $197bn, a significant share, had accrued from those countries categorised as least developed (UNDP 2011 ). A more recent report describes illicit financial flows from eight countries, including Bangladesh and Nepal, as a symptom of poor governance and dysfunctional regulation, and having the following consequences:

• undermining of domestic resource mobilisation by eroding the tax base
• causing greater dependency on official development assistance
• reducing domestic investment and slowing poverty reduction efforts and worsening of inequality (UNDP 2014 ).

Illicit financial flows from developing countries worldwide in 2013 totalled $1.1 trillion, a figure greater than the combined total of foreign direct investment and net official development assistance received by those economies in that year. As examples, illicit financial flows between 2004 and 2013 from Bangladesh totalled $5588 million, from Nepal $567m, and from the Philippines $9025m (Kar & Spanjers 2015 ).

Political corruption is the manipulation of policies, institutions and rules of procedure in the allocation of resources and financing by decision makers, who abuse their position to sustain their power, status and wealth (Transparency International 2016a ).

An investigation in Bangladesh of self-reported compliance with corporate governance, examined enforcement documents of the Securities and Exchange Commission against actual corporate governance compliance from 2007 to 2011 (Nurunnabi, Hossain & Al-Mosa 2016 ). The authors observe that corruption and lack of enforcement in Bangladesh induced falsification of formal financial reporting under both democratic and military governments (2007–2008). The extent of falsification of information is stated as a cause of alarm for both local and international policy-makers and local and international investors. One thousand one hundred and ninety-four Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement documents were evaluated and 20 semi-structured interviews were conducted.

In 2007, the government of China had more than 1200 laws, rules and directives against corruption, but implementation was ineffective. With only a 3% likelihood of a corrupt official being sent to jail, corruption was a low-risk high-return activity. Even low-level officials had the opportunity to amass an illicit fortune of tens of millions of yuan. The secretary to the Chinese Communist Party in Janwei county of Sechuan province acquired 34 million yuan (£3 467 952/$5 096 000) and the colleague of another Chinese Communist Party (CCP) secretary, his city’s anti-corruption chief, collected bribes worth more than 30 million yuan (£346 794 000/$4 497 000; Lewis 2008b ).

Corruption in China is concentrated in those sectors with extensive state involvement, such as infrastructure projects and government procurement, the consequent increased costs of which, during a 10-year period, were estimated as 10% of spending (ending in 2005). Such a depletion of funds contributed to environmental degradation, social instability and inadequate health care, housing and education:

To estimate roughly the direct costs of corruption, we can suppose that ten per cent of government spending, contracts, and transactions is used as kickbacks and bribes or is simply stolen. (Lewis 2008b :n.p.; Pei 2007 :n.p.)

In relative terms, developing countries are the most affected by volumes of wealth held abroad, calculated for 2014 as 30% for those of Africa (Zucman 2015 :53). But between 1970 and 2008, an examination of capital sent from 33 African countries concluded that over that 38-year period, ‘capital flight’ amounted to $735bn, a sum roughly equal to 80% of the combined GDP of those countries during that time. The period of this study indicated that the sum involved was ‘not a transitory product of unusual circumstances but rather an outcome of persistent underlying causes’ (Ndikumana & Boyce 2011 :46). An earlier study by the same authors concluded that this sum was ‘from assets belonging to a narrow, relatively wealthy stratum of populations while, in consequence, public external debts are born by the people through their governments’ (Ndikumana & Boyce 2008 quoted in Shaxson 2011 :158). Similar procedures making use of offshore tax-havens have operated on behalf of the rich and at the cost of the poor within many countries (Shaxson 2011 ). Overall, by its hierarchy of bribery and graft, corruption for the benefit of the few means continued and exacerbated poverty for the many and simultaneous breakdown or malfunction of hospitals, clinics and health care (Ndikumana & Boyce 2011 :74–83, cited in Lewis 2015 ). Corrupt practices are widespread within entire commercial sectors of some countries, and are known to have been causes of serious inadequacies such as building failure (Ambraseys & Bilham 2011 ; Lewis 2005 , 2008a , 2008b ).

Political elites of some developing countries are known to accumulate capital because of the fragility of their position and constant threat to their political survival (Hoogvelt 1976 :137); partly for that reason, large sums are transferred to safer European accounts or to the many global ‘tax-havens’ (Shaxson 2011 ).

In a large scale public works contract in Italy, endemic collusion between levels of administration, elected officials, bureaucrats and private contractors made it obvious that for such abuse of public office for personal gain to persist countrywide, elected officials are necessarily and regularly involved. Extensive and persistent corruption in any sector, could not be regarded as a phenomenon isolated from its broader political context; a political environment of corruption involves a non-benevolent principal rather than being a benign bureaucratic or institutional slippage from a benevolent one (Golden & Picci 2005 ).

Petty corruption refers to everyday abuse of entrusted power by low- and mid-level public officials in their interactions with ordinary citizens, when seeking to access basic goods or services in hospitals, schools, police departments and other agencies (Transparency International 2016a ). These corrupt practices are rarely spoken of and expectations of bribes are rarely applicable to anyone not known to the locality. Without long-term presence and discrete research (e.g. Hartmann & Boyce 1990 ; Ray 1986 ), assured evidence of ‘petty’ corruption remains obscure.

In 2013, a Philippines national survey (Office of the Ombudsman 2014 ) indicated fewer families to have given bribes or ‘grease money’ in 2013 than in 2010. The survey found that more people in ‘the lower income stratum’ were more likely to pay bribes or ‘grease money’ despite ‘their lower financial capacity’, assumed by the report as to ensure government social services essential to them were made available.

Of West Africa, Hoogvelt ( 1976 ), believes corruption affects everyone:

patients offering bribes to nurses in hospital to persuade them to pass on a bed-pan; traffic offenders bribing police officers to waive the fine; tax collectors adding their personal increment to inland revenue extractions; councillors awarding contracts to firms in which they (or their kin) have a financial stake; educational officers giving government scholarships to their cousins; and political candidates buying the votes of entire electoral districts. (pp. 128–129)

Hoogvelt adds that corruption at the law enforcement level, involving lower echelons of civil and public services, is where contact between administrations and the public are most frequent and where, therefore, the greatest volume of corruption occurs – though the amount of damage done and money involved may well be greater at higher levels (Hoogvelt 1976 :130).

Corruption retains society’s levels in place, corrupt behaviours at lower social levels being a microcosm of those at upper levels. Where larger landowners control most land of their district, consequences at lower levels impact upon minor landholders, share croppers and labourers who own little or no land (Hartmann & Boyce 1990 :7); a system that ensures those at each social level will remain at that level, the rich as well as the poor, and the poor will remain beholden to, and controlled by, the rich.

An exception from Bangladesh illustrates the generality: Mahmud was a poor student living in Johir Ali’s house and tutoring his children in exchange for a room and board. After Mahmud graduated from secondary school, Johir Ali is said to have paid a 500 taka bribe to secure him a job as a tahsildar , a government land-tax officer who records the amount of land which tenants held on lease. Tenants were often in arrears with their rent payments and at risk of dispossession, providing Mahmud opportunities to help himself by helping others with their payments. Mahmud charged a fee for his services, but since it was less than the going price of land, most tenants were happy to comply. During his years as a tax officer, Mahmud accumulated considerable capital, which he invested in land and later left his government job to take up the management of his sizeable holdings (Hartmann & Boyce 1990 :55).

Every service demands a kickback or backhander additional to any legal payment that may be required. Larger landholders in line for development aid, such as for the drilling of wells, will buy up numbers of offers to which they may be eligible to sell on to lesser landholders either as wells or as water from wells in their ownership. Larger land owners control lesser landholders and smaller crop growers. From development aid, the poor get temporary employment (e.g. from the use of water), the rich reaping repeated capital gains from the installation of a well (Hartmann & Boyce 1990 :257, 262, 272, 274).

As a consequence of ‘tremendous power’ wielded in Bangladesh by the rural rich, ubiquitous corruption pervades every sector at every level and is stated as being a principal hindrance to the achievement of self-reliance by the rural poor. Wealthy landowners, physicians, shopkeepers, chairmen or members of the union parishad (local government), have long-lasting connections and alliances with government in the capital, officials of all ranks, lawyers, judges and powerful politicians. Sustained by bribes, gifts, marriage and birth, these alliances, enable the rural rich to safeguard their narrow self-interest, ‘committing crimes if necessary and getting away’ (Ray 1986 :24–25).

A study in flash flood prone north-eastern Bangladesh (Choudhury & Haque 2016 ) identifies social power structures, imposed by local political and commercial elites, as serving to diminish local adaptive capacities and consequently as an impediment upon resilience. Petty corruption, in the form of bribery referred to in the study, emerges as an understated but consistent component of impositions upon those in poverty; expressed as the eponymous quotation: ‘We are more scared of power elites than the floods’.

Reports of occasional local optimism (e.g. Hossain 2016 ) need to be set against realities of corruption at all relevant levels and scales (Transparency International 2016b ) and of its social consequences.

Contexts of poverty may be created by corrupt practices at higher levels of government and commercial management (Transparency International 2016a ; UNDP 2014 ), exacerbated and perpetuated by social systems imposed upon people and their communities for purposes of domination and exploitation to facilitate ‘petty’ corrupt practices (Choudhury & Haque 2016 ; Hartmann & Boyce 1990 ; Ray 1986 ).

Contexts of poverty are known to be amongst the most vulnerable and the most disaster-prone (Lewis & Kelman 2012 ). Of countries lowest on the internally perceived international corruption scale (Transparency International 2016b ), several are amongst the poorest developing countries (Ambraseys & Bilham 2011 ). Of the 168 countries on the scale, Myanmar is 147th, Bangladesh is 139th, Nepal is 130th and the Philippines is 95th; of low-income and lower middle-income countries (CRED/UNISDR 2016b ), Myanmar is 147th and Pakistan is 117th. Whilst consistent correlation between corruption and disaster impacts is unlikely, disaster mortality is highest in Haiti, at 158th amongst the lowest on the corruption scale and highest for disaster mortality.

In these and numerous other countries, poverty persists for large numbers of people caused to be at risk by pernicious political, commercial and social realities which result from discrimination and displacement, impoverishment by others’ self-seeking expenditure, denial of access to resources, and corrupt siphoning of public money that may be otherwise spent to the public good (Lewis & Kelman 2012 ); sub-cultures working to favour the few but in opposition to the interests of the many (Lewis 2015 ).

As a perpetrator and perpetuator of poverty and inequality (Alexander 2016 ; Lewis 2011a ; Lewis & Kelman 2012 ), by its various guises and their consequences, corruption is a ubiquitous impediment of abilities to ‘accommodate and recover’, and ‘change in order to survive’, the basic functions of resilience (UN/ISDR 2009 ).

Further, where aspects of national income are diverted to private accounts and payments of bribes are set against declared company profits, the basis upon which national tax incomes are formed is reduced. Income which could have been spent for the benefit of society at large is depleted on such a scale that housing, education, sanitation, nutrition and healthcare (Ndikumana & Boyce 2011 ), for example, are threatened or rendered inadequate (Lewis 2011a ). Corrupt behaviours leading to depletion of national and local incomes are an explanation for why works for basic community development are perceived as necessary for preliminary projects to precede projected inputs for sustainability and resilience (e.g. Ahmed et al. 2016 ).

Until corrupt practices are traced and stopped, it may not be realistic to expect villagers in long-term poverty to turn to new activities merely by advising them to do so: ‘After all, decades of abject poverty has instilled in them a deep fear that trying anything new may be disastrous’ (Ray 1986 :4). Traditionally ingrained corrupt practices may seem inseparable from social norms, the introduction of new practices being seemingly ‘next to impossible’, however essential they may be for longer-term social development to succeed.

Only ‘rugged common sense’ enables the poor to survive decades of exploitation by a ruling urban elite. Famished villagers cannot work towards change to the system by which they are oppressed unless they have achieved a minimum of nutrition and physical strength, ill health being inextricably linked to illiteracy, malnutrition, superstition, unemployment and agricultural backwardness (Ray 1986 :vii–viii, 3–4) – a close comparison with statements made by Symons ( 1839 ) with reference to Edinburgh and European capitals.

Corruption is not only a financial issue; corruption creates social systems compliant to its practices and influences entire societies and the social relationships they contain. In these circumstances and where systemic corruption persists, attempts to induce and to inculcate resilience to hazards and crises, if successful in any short-term, may be unlikely to succeed in any longer-term.

The start of any programme for rural resilience has to be the depletion of those ‘traditionally ingrained corrupt practices’. If famished villagers who have not achieved a minimum of nutrition and physical strength, cannot work towards change to the system by which they are oppressed, then externally applied programmes for purposes of creating resilience are unlikely to succeed in any longer-term. Corruption and its consequences will make any kind of social development programme unsustainable and community resilience is unlikely until individual resilience amongst individuals is itself sustainable (Lewis 2015 ).

Repeatedly, necessary injections of programmes and projects for sustainability and resilience might suggest their temporary presence to be due not to unavailable financial resources but to indigenous illicit misappropriations of financial capital. Corruption denies and impedes personal and community empowerment for change, the basic requirement for disaster risk reduction (Von Meding & Forino 2016 ). How much less vulnerable, and how much more resilient would populations be, without social impediments and financial draining at all levels imposed by corruption in any and all its guises?

Development programmes of wider inclusivity are emerging from responses to climate change and its consequences (Ahmed et al. 2016 ; Kelman et al. 2016 ; Lewis 1999 ). Adjustments for this wider inclusivity could be made to go further and to incorporate measures for annihilation and prevention of corrupt practices which, with poverty reduction, disaster risk reduction and resilience, would be an inclusivity serving to ensure improved long-term developmental effectiveness, sustainability and reliability.

Social consequences of corruption have been examined and considered and found to be negatively influenced against the required prerequisites for resilience. A question that remains is not ‘can resilience exist in contexts of corruption?’ but rather, ‘would the inducement of resilience be less necessary in non-corrupt contexts?’

Acknowledgements

Competing interests.

The author declares that he has no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this article.

How to cite this article: Lewis, J., 2017, ‘Social impacts of corruption upon community resilience and poverty’, Jàmbá: Journal of Disaster Risk Studies 9(1), a391. https://doi.org/10.4102/jamba.v9i1.391

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In the context of political economy, corruption refers to an illegal transaction that harms the group the agent is obliged to serve through the transaction. For example, a construction company may offer a kickback to a government official (agent) in return for winning a contract outside the normal bidding process. The official has harmed the government he serves and, by extension, the people it represents because the government probably will pay more for the job than it would have under a competitive process. The issue of corruption in politics and the marketplace is of interest to development economists because it often hamstrings poor countries in their efforts to rise out of poverty through enterprise.

The Cost of Corruption

Besides being immoral, corruption tends to be an inefficient way to bring together buyers and sellers. Because it is by definition illegal—even when it is common and accepted—corruption naturally tends to be private and secretive. In a private arrangement, there is no guarantee that the good or service being bought carries a market price. That is, another buyer may be willing to pay more, or another seller may be willing to sell for less, but it is impossible to know because the market is not public. Further, resources are expended in the effort to maintain the secrecy of the transactions. Finally, corrupt contracts, because they are illegal, must be enforced in extralegal fashion. Thus a corrupt system is an inherently inefficient system.

In some cases corruption might be reasonably viewed as the most expedient option. For example, in a country with excessive bureaucratic hurdles to starting a business, bribery may be a way to speed the process. This is only a stop gap, of course, since it leaves in place a system that serves the corrupt by providing numerous opportunities to demand bribe money and to tilt the playing field to the advantage of friends, family and political patrons.

Corruption as an Obstacle to Development

The monetary cost of corruption is slower economic growth. Studies have shown that decreasing corruption leads to significant gains in foreign direct investment, which is one of the chief spurs to development. Economist Shan-Jin Wei has argued that corruption is proportionately more damaging to economic growth than is taxation of business. In terms of its discouraging effect on investment, Wei found, “An increase in the corruption level from that of Singapore to that of Mexico is equivalent to raising the tax rate on multinationals by over twenty percentage points.”

Turning international business investment away is only one of several ways that corruption stifles growth. “ Corruption and Poverty ,” a review essay commissioned by USAID, summarizes its findings with a long list of negative effects: “Corruption impedes economic growth by discouraging foreign and domestic investment, taxing and dampening entrepreneurship, lowering the quality of public infrastructure, decreasing tax revenues, diverting public talent into rent-seeking, and distorting the composition of public expenditure.” (Rent seeking is an economics term referring to any effort to profit not by adding value but by manipulating a market’s social or political environment in order to gain an artificial advantage.)

The authors of the review also point out that corruption exacerbates income inequality. They find that this link is due to several negative effects of corruption, including distortion of the “legal and policy frameworks allowing some to benefit more than others”; “unfair distribution of government resources and services”; and “lower income households (and businesses) pay[ing] a higher proportion of their income in bribes” than wealthier households.

The Corruption Perception Index

In light of these observations, it is no surprise that nations with high levels of public sector corruption face major development challenges (while nations with relatively low levels of political corruption tend to thrive economically). This is apparent from even a cursory look at Transparency International ’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI), which measures the reputations of national governments with respect to corruption. In 2017, the five worst-scoring countries on the CPI were Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, South Sudan, and Somalia. The top five were New Zealand, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Switzerland. 

Corruption as an Immoral Choice

Although political reforms may diminish inducements to corruption, it is important to remember that every instance of corruption is an individual decision. Even where corruption is common and widely accepted, people can choose not to engage in it. And even where it is rare and stigmatized, people may initiate a corrupt transaction.

Corruption is a serious violation of justice, because it benefits some at the expense of others without legitimate reason. It erodes the bonds of trust between people within a community, and between people and the government officials who are supposed to represent their interests. Corruption also tends to favor the well-connected while locking out those who are poor and lack high-level connections.

Fighting Corruption

One strategy for combating corruption is simply to limit the extent of state authority. Expansive regulation (such as business licensing) creates ample opportunity and temptation to rig the process in favor of one or another participant. Where government has narrowly defined powers that keep it out of such decision-making, the rule of law is encouraged and corruption discouraged.

Thus, it’s important that government regulatory law curtail the discretion permitted to individual officials. Where gatekeepers in the bureaucracy have wide leeway to interpret and apply the law, the potential for corruption increases. This strategy is no substitute for virtue, of course, since a measure of interpretive leeway is necessary and inevitable in any system of government.

The costs of fighting corruption through government channels also must be realistically assessed. Government anti-corruption initiatives may be costly and may possess some of the same features that promoted corruption in the first place (e.g., layers of bureaucracy and limited resources that force bureaucrats to choose who to focus on and who to ignore).

Thus, while corruption must never be viewed as an acceptable practice, advocates of the rule of law should be realistic about the prospects for its elimination. The inherent weaknesses in political initiatives to limit political corruption also should serve as a spur for cultures to combat corruption by other means, as through the work of civil institutions (e.g., churches, fraternal organizations) in emphasizing the cultivation of personal virtue. When people become convinced that corruption is harmful to society and damaging to their own moral integrity, and when they possess the courage to act accordingly, then a culture is better positioned to make progress in the fight against corruption in politics and the market.

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Does Corruption Cause Poverty?

By Walden Bello

The issue of corruption resonates in developing countries. In the Philippines, for instance, the slogan of the coalition that is likely to win the 2010 presidential elections is "Without corrupt officials, there are no poor people."

Not surprisingly, the international financial institutions have weighed in. The World Bank has made "good governance" a major thrust of its work, asserting that the "World Bank Group focus on governance and anticorruption (GAC) follows from its mandate to reduce poverty - a capable and accountable state creates opportunities for poor people, provides better services, and improves development outcomes."

Because it erodes trust in government, corruption must certainly be condemned and corrupt officials resolutely prosecuted. Corruption also weakens the moral bonds of civil society on which democratic practices and processes rest. But although research suggests it has some bearing on the spread of poverty, corruption is not the principal cause of poverty and economic stagnation, popular opinion notwithstanding.

World Bank and Transparency International data show that the Philippines and China exhibit the same level of corruption, yet China grew by 10.3 percent per year between 1990 and 2000, while the Philippines grew by only 3.3 percent. Moreover, as a recent study by Shaomin Lee and Judy Wu shows, "China is not alone; there are other countries that have relatively high corruption and high growth rates."

Limits of a Hegemonic Narrative

The "corruption-causes-poverty narrative" has become so hegemonic that it has often marginalized policy issues from political discourse. This narrative appeals to the elite and middle class, which dominate the shaping of public opinion. It's also a safe language of political competition among politicians. Political leaders can deploy accusations of corruption against one another for electoral effect without resorting to the destabilizing discourse of class.

Yet this narrative of corruption has increasingly less appeal for the poorer classes. Despite the corruption that marked his reign, Joseph Estrada is running a respectable third in the presidential contest in the Philippines, with solid support among many urban poor communities. But it is perhaps in Thailand where lower classes have most decisively rejected the corruption discourse, which the elites and Bangkok-based middle class deployed to oust Thaksin Shinawatra from the premiership in 2006.

While in power, Thaksin brazenly used his office to enlarge his corporate empire. But the rural masses and urban lower classes - the base of the so-called "Red Shirts" - have ignored this corruption and are fighting to restore his coalition to power. They remember the Thaksin period from 2001 to 2006 as a golden time. Thailand recovered from the Asian financial crisis after Thaksin kicked out the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Thai leader promoted expansionary policies with a redistributive dimension, such as cheap universal health care, a one-million-baht development fund for each town, and a moratorium on farmers' servicing of their debt. These policies made a difference in their lives.

Thaksin's Red Shirts are probably right in their implicit assessment that pro-people policies are more decisive than corruption when it comes to addressing poverty. Indeed, in Thailand and elsewhere, clean-cut technocrats have probably been responsible for greater poverty than the most corrupt politicians. The corruption-causes-poverty discourse is no doubt popular with elites and international financial institutions because it serves as a smokescreen for the structural causes of poverty, and stagnation and wrong policy choices of the more transparent technocrats.

The Philippine Case

The case of the Philippines since 1986 illustrates the greater explanatory power of the "wrong-policy narrative" than the corruption narrative. According to an ahistorical narrative, massive corruption suffocated the promise of the post-Marcos democratic republic. In contrast, the wrong-policy narrative locates the key causes of Philippine underdevelopment and poverty in historical events and developments.

The complex of policies that pushed the Philippines into the economic quagmire over the last 30 years can be summed up by a formidable term: structural adjustment. Also known as neoliberal restructuring, it involves prioritizing debt repayment, conservative macroeconomic management, huge cutbacks in government spending, trade and financial liberalization, privatization and deregulation, and export-oriented production. Structural adjustment came to the Philippines courtesy of the World Bank, the IMF, and the World Trade Organization (WTO), but local technocrats and economists internalized and disseminated the doctrine.

Corazon Aquino was personally honest - indeed the epitome of non-corruption - and her contribution to the reestablishment of democracy was indispensable. But her acceptance of the IMF's demand to prioritize debt repayment over development brought about a decade of stagnation and continuing poverty. Interest payments as a percentage of total government expenditures went from 7 percent in 1980 to 28 percent in 1994. Capital expenditures, on the other hand, plunged from 26 percent to 16 percent. Since government is the biggest investor in the Philippines - indeed in any economy - the radical stripping away of capital expenditures helps explain the stagnant 1 percent average yearly growth in gross domestic product in the 1980s, and the 2.3 percent rate in the first half of the 1990s.

In contrast, the Philippines' Southeast Asian neighbors ignored the IMF's prescriptions. They limited debt servicing while ramping up government capital expenditures in support of growth. Not surprisingly, they grew by 6 to 10 percent from 1985 to 1995, attracting massive Japanese investment, while the Philippines barely grew and gained the reputation of a depressed market that repelled investors.

When Aquino's successor, Fidel Ramos, came to power in 1992, the main agenda of his technocrats was to bring down all tariffs to 0-5 percent and bring the Philippines into the WTO and the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA), moves intended to make trade liberalization irreversible. A pick-up in the growth rate in the early years of Ramos sparked hope, but the green shoots were short-lived. Another neoliberal policy, financial liberalization, crushed this early promise. The elimination of foreign exchange controls and speculative investment restrictions attracted billions of dollars from 1993-1997. But this also meant that when panic hit Asian foreign investors in summer 1997, the same lack of capital controls facilitated the stampede of billions of dollars from the country in a few short weeks. This capital flight pushed the economy into recession and stagnation in the next few years.

The administration of the next president, Joseph Estrada, did not reverse course, and under the presidency of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, neoliberal policies continued to reign. Over the next few years, the Philippine government instituted new liberalization measures on the trade front, entering into free-trade agreements with Japan and China despite clear evidence that trade liberalization was destroying the two pillars of the economy: industry and agriculture. Radical unilateral trade liberalization severely destabilized the Philippine manufacturing sector. The number of textile and garments firms, for instance, drastically reduced from 200 in 1970 to 10 in recent years. As one of Arroyo's finance secretaries admitted, "There's an uneven implementation of trade liberalization, which was to our disadvantage." While he speculated that consumers might have benefited from the tariff liberalization, he acknowledged that "it has killed so many local industries."

As for agriculture, the liberalization of the country's agricultural trade after the country joined the WTO in 1995 transformed the Philippines from a net food-exporting country into a net food-importing country after the mid-1990s. This year the China ASEAN Trade Agreement (CAFTA), negotiated by the Arroyo administration, goes into effect, and the prospect of cheap Chinese produce flooding the Philippines has made Filipino vegetable farmers fatalistic about their survival.

During the long Arroyo reign, the debt-repayment-oriented macroeconomic management policy that came with structural adjustment stifled the economy. With 20-25 percent of the national budget reserved for debt service payments because of the draconian Automatic Appropriations Law, government finances were in a state of permanent and widening deficit, which the administration tried to solve by contracting more loans. Indeed, the Arroyo administration contracted more loans than the previous three administrations combined.

When the deficit reached gargantuan proportions, the government refused to declare a debt moratorium or at least renegotiate debt repayment terms to make them less punitive. At the same time, the administration did not have the political will to force the rich to take the brunt of bridging the deficit, by increasing taxes on their income and improving revenue collection. Under pressure from the IMF, the government levied this burden on the poor and the middle class by adopting an expanded value added tax (EVAT) of 12 percent on purchases. Commercial establishments passed on this tax to poor and middle-class consumers, forcing them to cut back on consumption. This then boomeranged back on small merchants and entrepreneurs in the form of reduced profits, forcing many out of business.

The straitjacket of conservative macroeconomic management, trade and financial liberalization, as well as a subservient debt policy, kept the economy from expanding significantly. As a result, the percentage of the population living in poverty increased from 30 to 33 percent between 2003 and 2006, according to World Bank figures. By 2006, there were more poor people in the Philippines than at any other time in the country's history.

Policy and Poverty in the Third World

The Philippine story is paradigmatic. Many countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia saw the same story unfold. Taking advantage of the Third World debt crisis, the IMF and the World Bank imposed structural adjustment in over 70 developing countries in the course of the 1980s. Trade liberalization followed adjustment in the 1990s as the WTO, and later rich countries, dragooned developing countries into free-trade agreements.

Because of this trade liberalization, gains in economic growth and poverty reduction posted by developing countries in the 1960s and 1970s had disappeared by the 1980s and 1990s. In practically all structurally adjusted countries, trade liberalization wiped out huge swathes of industry, and countries enjoying a surplus in agricultural trade became deficit countries. By the beginning of the millennium, the number of people living in extreme poverty had increased globally by 28 million from the decade before. The number of poor increased in Latin America and the Caribbean, Central and Eastern Europe, the Arab states, and sub-Saharan Africa. The reduction in the number of the world's poor mainly occurred in China and countries in East Asia, which spurned structural readjustment policies and trade liberalization multilateral institutions and local neoliberal technocrats imposed other developing economies.

China and the rapidly growing newly industrializing countries of East and Southeast Asia, where most of the global reduction in poverty took place, were marked by high degrees of corruption. The decisive difference between their performance and that of countries subjected to structural adjustment was not corruption but economic policy.

Despite its malign effect on democracy and civil society, corruption is not the main cause of poverty. The "anti poverty, anti-corruption" crusades that so enamor the middle classes and the World Bank will not meet the challenge of poverty. Bad economic policies create and entrench poverty. Unless and until we reverse the policies of structural adjustment, trade liberalization, and conservative macroeconomic management, we will not escape the poverty trap.

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Corruption and Poor Governance- The Major Causes of Poverty in Many Third world Countries

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Essay on Corruption for Students and Children

500+ words essay on corruption.

Essay on Corruption – Corruption refers to a form of criminal activity or dishonesty. It refers to an evil act by an individual or a group. Most noteworthy, this act compromises the rights and privileges of others. Furthermore, Corruption primarily includes activities like bribery or embezzlement. However, Corruption can take place in many ways. Most probably, people in positions of authority are susceptible to Corruption. Corruption certainly reflects greedy and selfish behavior.

Methods of Corruption

First of all, Bribery is the most common method of Corruption. Bribery involves the improper use of favours and gifts in exchange for personal gain. Furthermore, the types of favours are diverse. Above all, the favours include money, gifts, company shares, sexual favours, employment , entertainment, and political benefits. Also, personal gain can be – giving preferential treatment and overlooking crime.

Embezzlement refers to the act of withholding assets for the purpose of theft. Furthermore, it takes place by one or more individuals who were entrusted with these assets. Above all, embezzlement is a type of financial fraud.

The graft is a global form of Corruption. Most noteworthy, it refers to the illegal use of a politician’s authority for personal gain. Furthermore, a popular way for the graft is misdirecting public funds for the benefit of politicians .

Extortion is another major method of Corruption. It means to obtain property, money or services illegally. Above all, this obtainment takes place by coercing individuals or organizations. Hence, Extortion is quite similar to blackmail.

Favouritism and nepotism is quite an old form of Corruption still in usage. This refers to a person favouring one’s own relatives and friends to jobs. This is certainly a very unfair practice. This is because many deserving candidates fail to get jobs.

Abuse of discretion is another method of Corruption. Here, a person misuses one’s power and authority. An example can be a judge unjustly dismissing a criminal’s case.

Finally, influence peddling is the last method here. This refers to illegally using one’s influence with the government or other authorized individuals. Furthermore, it takes place in order to obtain preferential treatment or favour.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Ways of Stopping Corruption

One important way of preventing Corruption is to give a better salary in a government job. Many government employees receive pretty low salaries. Therefore, they resort to bribery to meet their expenses. So, government employees should receive higher salaries. Consequently, high salaries would reduce their motivation and resolve to engage in bribery.

Tough laws are very important for stopping Corruption. Above all, strict punishments need to be meted out to guilty individuals. Furthermore, there should be an efficient and quick implementation of strict laws.

Applying cameras in workplaces is an excellent way to prevent corruption. Above all, many individuals would refrain from indulging in Corruption due to fear of being caught. Furthermore, these individuals would have otherwise engaged in Corruption.

The government must make sure to keep inflation low. Due to the rise in prices, many people feel their incomes to be too low. Consequently, this increases Corruption among the masses. Businessmen raise prices to sell their stock of goods at higher prices. Furthermore, the politician supports them due to the benefits they receive.

To sum it up, Corruption is a great evil of society. This evil should be quickly eliminated from society. Corruption is the poison that has penetrated the minds of many individuals these days. Hopefully, with consistent political and social efforts, we can get rid of Corruption.

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