Impact of corruption and unemployment shocks on income inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa: a quantile-on-quantile approach

Purpose This paper aims to examine the impact of corruption and unemployment on income inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa. Design/methodology/approach We employ the quantile-on-quantile technique, which allows us to examine the impact of the quantiles of the independent variable on the quantiles of the dependent variable of the distribution. Findings The outcome shows that countries in the upper range of the gross domestic product per capita such as Botswana, Seychelles and Mauritius had fewer adverse supply shocks from corruption and unemployment, which is associated with higher income equality. For countries in the middle range such as Nigeria, Kenya and Angola, corruption supplies extreme adverse shocks to inequality in Nigeria and Angola. However, Kenya experienced a mixed shock, but the negative is more evident. Unemployment provided a negative shock to unequal income distribution for almost all quantiles in the middle-range income countries. Considering countries at the lower range such as Burundi, Central African Republic (CAR) and Niger, corruption supplies a mixed shock on income inequality for almost all the quantiles in Niger and Burundi but supplies a positive shock on inequality in CAR. The shock supply from unemployment to inequality is positive in Burundi and Niger, except for CAR, which exhibits a mixed shock. Originality/value From the observations, we can infer that a mixed supply of shocks means a trade-off between inequality and corruption and inequality and unemployment. A situation where higher quantiles of corruption (lower corruption) are associated with higher inequality was observed.