Does Women in Politics and Income Inequality Affect Social and Economic Well-Being? Insights from OECD Countries

Abstract

Women in politics and income inequality have become two prominent issues in developed economies and remain a topic of ongoing debate. To achieve sustained economic transformation, economies around the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) urgently need to adapt to sustainable development practices to reduce the risk of experiencing bad economic outlooks. However, the gap in the existing literature is the relationship between women in politics, income inequality, and the well-being of people, which has not received sufficient attention thus far. To fill this gap, this study aims to assess how income inequality and women in politics affect the social and economic well-being of OECD countries. This study adopts a panel dataset from 2000 to 2020 in a panel regression model and performs a fixed-effects analysis of the relationship among these factors. Interestingly, we show no significant association between women in politics and human development. In contrast, we confirm a positive and significant relationship between women in politics and gross national savings as well as renewable energy supply. Moreover, we confirm the key role of income and poverty levels in triggering social and economic well-being, as it shows a significant and negative relationship in all of our models. These original findings have several practical implications for policymakers and contribute to the current debate on the role of women in politics and income inequality across OECD countries.