The relationship between corruption and chronic diseases: evidence from Europeans aged 50 years and older

OBJECTIVES: Do people living in more corrupted countries report worse health? We answer this question by investigating the relationship between country-level corruption and the number of chronic diseases for a sample of Europeans aged above 50. METHODS: We link a rich panel dataset on individual health and socio-demographic characteristics with two country-level corruption indices, analyse the overall relationship with pooled ordinary least squares and fixed-effect models, explore heterogeneous effects driven by country and individual factors, and disentangle the effect across different public sectors. RESULTS: Individuals living in more corrupted countries suffer from a higher number of chronic diseases. The heterogeneity analysis shows that (1) health outcomes are worsened especially for respondents living in relatively low-income countries; (2) the health of females and people with poor socio-economic status is more affected by corruption; (3) the corruption–health negative link mainly occurs for cardiovascular diseases and ulcers; (4) only corrupted sectors linked with healthcare are associated with poorer health. CONCLUSIONS: We inform the policy debate with novel results in establishing a nexus between corruption and morbidity indicators. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s00038-020-01347-w) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.