Is informality a barrier to sustainable development?

Gokcer Ozgur, Ceyhun Elgin and Adem Elveren ()

Sustainable Development, 2021, vol. 29, issue 1, 45-65

Abstract: In this article, using a novel, annual cross‐country panel dataset that covers 160 economies from 1950 to 2016, we examine the association between the size of the informal sector and various indicators of sustainable development. The range of indicators encompasses health‐related, economic, environmental, education, and social variables. Our results suggest that the size of the informal sector is negatively associated with GDP per capita, carbon dioxide emissions per capita, education, educational attainment, life expectancy, and access to safe drinking water, and positively related to female labor force participation rate, poverty rates, mortality rates, and air pollution. We also find that these empirical associations significantly interact with GDP per capita, indicating that the effect of larger informal sector size is stronger in less developed economies.

Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.2130

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:sustdv:v:29:y:2021:i:1:p:45-65

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainable Development is currently edited by Richard Welford

More articles in Sustainable Development from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().