Abstract
Corruption is an epidemic in Kenya. Major corruption scandals have been reported since the early 90’s. These include the Turkwel Hydroelectric Power Station scandal (1986 – 1990), the Goldenberg scandal (1990 – 1999), the Grand Regency scandal in 2008, and the Triton Oil scandal in 2009 among numerous others. Despite the attempts to fight corruption, the war has never been won. While a number of studies have examined the determinants of corruption in order to offer policy recommendations to fight corruption, individual-level factors have not been exhaustively examined especially for developing countries like Kenya where international corruption indices paint a grim picture. Moreover, the studies have mostly been based on perception of individuals and not the actual payment of bribe. This study sought to assess the individual factors that influence individuals to pay bribes in Kenya. The study uses survey data from Afrobarometer Round 5 survey. The probit analysis shows that corruption in Kenya is influenced by gender, race, ethnicity, religiosity, employment status, and education while age, religion and location were not significant determinants of corruption. The study therefore concludes that a number of individual-level factors explain the likelihood to be corrupt suggesting that some individuals may be born or bred to bribe. To address corruption in Kenya, policy makers should include individual-level determinants of corruption in policy formulation efforts as they are just as important as other factors in explaining corruption.
Highlights
Corruption is one of the top three constraints to the developing and emerging economies (Shehu, 2005) it occurs in all countries, regardless of levels of social and economic development (Stapenhurst & Langseth, 1997)
The results showed that gender had a positive and significant effect on corruption
The results showed that race was positively related with corruption
Summary
Corruption is one of the top three constraints to the developing and emerging economies (Shehu, 2005) it occurs in all countries, regardless of levels of social and economic development (Stapenhurst & Langseth, 1997). Kenya has performed dismally in the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) surveys conducted by the Transparency International. In the latest CPI 2014 survey, Kenya was position 147 out of 177 countries in the world making Kenya the second most corrupt country in East Africa after Burundi and 35th in SubSaharan Africa (Transparency International, 2014a). An Afrobarometer Perception of Corruption Index (PCI) saw Kenya as the sixth most corrupt country in Africa (Richmond & Alpin, 2013). Kenya’s GDP was rebased catapulting it to a lower middle income economy (Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, 2014). Bloomberg ranked Kenya’s growth rate third in the world. Despite these glowing statistics, about half of Kenyans still live below the poverty line (Njonjo, 2013)
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