The Effect of Intergenerational Social Mobility on Tolerance to Corruption. An Analysis for OECD Countries.

Abstract: This study aims to provide the answer to the question if intergenerational social mobility has an effect on tolerance to corruption. By merging together two fields of literature in social science – corruption and equality of opportunities offered in a society and performing statistical analysis this paper provides some evidences that societal mobility and tolerance to corruption are correlated. The question of intergenerational social mobility has not been thoroughly investigated due to the limitations in the data availability. However recent studies in OECD countries allowed looking more in-depth into the phenomenon, giving an opportunity to fill in the gap in the theories. Analyzing tolerance to corruption effects of social mobility with measurement of actual social mobility was rarely employed in the quantitative analysis earlier. Using the data obtained from the World Value Review (Wave 6) for almost 22 000 individuals from the OECD countries, including their socio-demographic characteristics and perceived social mobility parameters, combined with the OECD dataset on the intergenerational educational attainment and earning elasticity, the study indicates that individual’s perception of society as mobile leads to lower tolerance of corruption. This relation holds regardless the level of societal trust and general satisfaction with life. Moreover, study concludes that educational mobility may also have negative effect on tolerance to corruption. This study contributes to the understanding why some countries succeeded in maintaining high quality of governance with low level of corruption whereas others trapped with dysfunctional political institutions.