Revisiting the Fiscal Policy–Income Inequality Nexus in Sub-Saharan Africa: Does Institutional Quality Matter?

Abstract

The growing imperative to attain equitable income distribution has compelled international organizations and the academic community to make a collaborative commitment towards alleviating the escalating income inequality experienced worldwide. While there has been a notable development of interest among scholars regarding the nexus between fiscal policy and income inequality, the empirical scrutiny on the contributing role of fiscal policy and institutional quality remains scant in the literature. The present study complements the existing literature by investigating the tripartite nexus between fiscal policy, institutional quality, and income inequality in SSA, which has received no empirical attention in the literature. This study utilizes an advanced econometric technique, the cross-sectional autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) approach, which addresses cross-sectional dependency and heterogeneity issues for the panel dataset during 1990–2015. The empirical results demonstrate that economic growth, population growth, and government tax exacerbate income inequality, whereas education, government expenditure, and institutional quality metrics mitigate income inequality in SSA countries in the short and long run. The findings also indicate that the performance of institutional quality settings in SSA is significant for fostering efficient fiscal policy, thus improving equitable income distribution. These findings offer substantial, valuable insights and policy implications for policymakers in SSA, which may inform the design and formulation of sustainable development strategies to achieve equitable income distribution.