Abstract
In 2015, the international community committed to “reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions.” According to international development agencies, good governance is crucial to achieving this. We examine the relationship between good governance and multidimensional poverty using hierarchical models and survey data for 71 countries. Our results suggest there is a direct effect of good governance on multidimensional poverty and that good governance is associated with reduced horizontal inequalities. However, we find evidence of a beneficial effect of good governance for middle‐income countries but not for low‐income countries. Thus, while our results suggest that good governance can play a role in reducing multidimensional poverty, they also suggest that governance reforms alone might not yield the desired effect for all countries.
Highlights
With target 1.2 of the Sustainable Development Goals, the international community committed to “reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions” by 2030 (United Nations, 2015, p. 18)
This is the first study to look into the relationship between good governance and multidimensional poverty as measured by the global MPI, combining micro- and macrodata from 71 countries
A direct effect of good governance for the entire sample is found, when separating the analysis by low- and middle-income countries, we find that this effect is mainly driven by middle-income countries
Summary
With target 1.2 of the Sustainable Development Goals, the international community committed to “reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions” by 2030 (United Nations, 2015, p. 18). Improvements in the efficiency and accountability of public institutions should lead to improvements in the coverage and quality of service delivery (Earle & Scott, 2010), which in turn should improve the lives of poor people, who are less likely to be able to fall back on privately provided alternatives to the public service infrastructure (Klugman, 2002). Another mechanism, listed by Earle and Scott Another mechanism, listed by Earle and Scott (2010, p. 33), is that “a more efficient and accountable public administration creates an environment that is more conducive for private sector development, which will lead to economic growth.”
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