The role of constitutions on poverty: A cross-national investigation

We construct and use a new historical data set on economics and social rights from the constitutions of 195 countries and an instrument variable strategy to answer two important questions. First, do economic and social rights provisions in constitutions reduce poverty, measured as headcount income and health outcomes? Second, does the strength of constitutional language of the economic and social rights matter? Constitutional provisions can be framed either more weakly as directive principles or more strongly as enforceable law. Our results suggest three findings. First, we do not find an association between constitutional rights generally framed and poverty. Second, we do not find an association between economic and social rights framed as directive principles and poverty. Third, we do find a strong negative association between economic and social rights framed as enforceable law and poverty when we use legal origins as our IV. These results persist for indices of constitutional rights and also when we restrict the sample to non-OECD countries. The policy implication is that constitutional provisions framed as enforceable law provide effective meta-rules with incentives for policymakers to initiate, fund, monitor and enforce poverty reduction policies. Journal of Comparative Economics 45 (2017) 563-581. Emeritus Associate Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, University of Connecticut, 365 Fairfield Way, Storrs, CT 06269-1063, USA; Assistant Professor of Economics, Department of Economics and Human Rights Institute, University of Connecticut, IZA, CReAM, HiCN, & INSIDE, 365 Fairfield Way, Storrs, Storrs, CT 06269-1063, USA. (C) 2017 Association for Comparative Economic Studies. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.