Human Rights and Inequality

We estimate the effect on income inequality of the ratification of the two fundamental human rights treaties, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), and of the ICCPR’s optional protocol, in a large panel of countries, 1960-2015. We propose a novel instrumental variable strategy, using the diffusion of national television broadcasting as an instrument for treaty ratification, based on the hypothesis that broadcasting exposure raised public awareness of human rights issues and thereby encouraged governments to ratify. Rather than relying on a single specification, we systematically estimate all combinations of control variables under three alternative identification designs, retaining only those satisfying a pre-specified set of weak-instrument and overidentification diagnostics. Ratification of the ICCPR has a robust, sizable, negative effect on inequality across all three designs; ICESCR and the optional protocol are identified only under specific instrument sets. A cumulative ratification index confirms a strong, robust negative effect.