Do Redistribution and Rule of law go together across countries?

Across 45 countries the link before adjusting for anything is r = +0.57, on a scale from -1 (opposite) to +1 (in step). A version that uses only each country's rank gives +0.45.

Does the link hold within countries over time, not just across countries?

Comparing each country only with itself across 2011-2024, and setting aside what happened worldwide in each year, the link is -0.148 (39 countries, 442 country-years). Using year-to-year changes, it is -0.096.

Does Redistribution cause Rule of law?

This analysis cannot answer that. It shows only that the two go together. A link between two country measures, adjusted or not, does not show that either one changes the other. Country figures also say nothing about individual people.

Redistribution vs. Rule of law

Holds up after adjusting for income

Across 45 countries, Redistribution and Rule of law rise and fall together at r = +0.57 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). Comparing only countries with similar income (GDP per person) shrinks it to +0.21 (q = 0.035, allowing for the many pairs tested). Much of the first figure is that both measures rise with national income, but a weak positive link remains.

Comparing countries across the middle half of redistribution, 23.2% to 38.1% reduction in the Gini, rule of law is better by 0.603 points at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 0.204 points.

Link before adjusting (r)+0.572p = 4.0e-5 · 45 countries

After adjusting for national income+0.209p = 0.172 · likely range [-0.09, +0.48]

p, allowing for regions0.002standard error 0.042 · 7 regions

Check for luck (q)0.035across 12,497 pairs

How to read these.r runs from −1 (one goes up as the other goes down) to +1 (they rise together), and 0 means no link. Adjusting for national income means comparing countries with the same GDP per person, so differences in wealth can’t explain the link. Income is used in percentage terms, since an extra $1,000 means more to a poor country than to a rich one. p is how likely a link this strong would be if there were really none. Below 0.05 means it is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 1.1e-32 means a decimal point followed by 31 zeros and then 11, so very close to zero. The likely range is where the true figure probably lies, and a range that crosses zero means the link could easily be chance. Countries in the same region tend to resemble each other, so the third figure allows for that, which gives a fairer p. The standard error is the typical size of the error in r. Finally, testing this many pairs means some will look strong by luck alone. A q below 0.05 means this link is unlikely to be one of those.

Redistribution · % reduction in the Ginilink with income +0.50 · moderate

Rule of law · index (approx. -2.5 to 2.5)link with income +0.72 · high

“Link with income” is how closely each measure tracks GDP per person across countries, from −1 to +1.

Every country as a dot

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

Method	r	p	Countries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted	+0.572	4.0e-5	45
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted	+0.450	0.002	45
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income	+0.209	0.172	45
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income	+0.086	0.581	45

The rank version uses only each country’s place in line, from lowest to highest, so a few extreme countries count for less. The adjusted and unadjusted versions use the same 45 countries: those that report both measures and GDP per person. So the gap between them comes from the adjustment, not from a change in which countries are counted. Drop in the size of r after adjusting: +0.363 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from +0.147 (without MEX) to +0.238 (without CHL). The bar above shows that range on a scale from −1 to +1, with the solid line at the full result. The single country that moves r most: MEX (-0.062).

Within each region

Countries are not separate, unrelated cases, and neighbors share a lot. A link that holds inside each region is far more believable than one that shows up only when comparing regions.

	n	r
Europe & Central Asia	31	+0.35

By income third

If the link shows up only in the richest third of countries, it is a feature of rich countries, not a general pattern.

	n	r
Poorest third	15	+0.37
Middle third	15	+0.16
Richest third	15	+0.38

By largest religious group

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

	n	r
Christians	36	+0.16

Without outliers (countries far outside the middle half of countries on either measure, by more than one and a half times the width of that middle half): r = +0.209 after dropping 0 countries.

Two series, one country

Both measures over the years for one country you pick. The two charts are stacked so they share only the years along the bottom.

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Over time, within countries

Everything above compares countries with each other at one moment. This section compares each country only with itself over 14years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.

Within countries over time, there is no link that is clearly more than chance (r = -0.148, comparing each country only with itself over the years, and each year only with the same year elsewhere). Whatever the cross-country picture shows, countries whose redistribution moved did not tend to see their rule of law move with it.

Across countries (adjusted)+0.209for comparison

Within countries-0.140each country vs itself

…and vs the same year elsewhere-0.148q = 0.612 · 39 countries

Year-on-year changes-0.096q = 0.360

Read with care.

Almost all of this indicator's variation is between countries, not within them, so the within-country estimate rests on a small part of the data.

442 country-years (one country in one year), 39 countries, 2011–2024, about 11 years each on average. Share of the variation that happens within countries over time: 4% for Redistribution, 3% for Rule of law. The margins of error allow for each country appearing many times, and for each year’s value being close to the year before.

Year-to-year changes are a cautious test, not a final answer. Looking only at changes from one year to the next removes each country’s own trends. But it also makes measurement mistakes louder, which pulls the results toward zero. A near-zero result here is weak evidence of no link, not proof.

With one measure years behind the other

Same year (lag 0): -0.148. A peak away from zero does not show which comes first. These series change slowly — this year’s value is close to last year’s. That makes the curve smooth and nearly symmetric, whatever produced the data. Even a sharp peak at one lag (a gap of some years) would not prove that one measure changes the other.

This curve peaks at the edge of the window (lag +7), so it is still drifting where the search stops. That pattern usually reflects a slow trend left over in the data, not a link with real timing. The peak value should not be read as the “true” link at the right lag.

The data

	% reduction in the Gini	index (approx. -2.5 to 2.5)	Years
Slovak Republic SVK	48.3%	0.561	2023, 2024
Belgium BEL	47.7%	1.28	2023, 2024
Finland FIN	47.2%	2.02	2023, 2024
Czechia CZE	43.5%	1.19	2023, 2024
Slovenia SVN	42.4%	0.979	2023, 2024
France FRA	42.2%	0.979	2023, 2024
Poland POL	41.9%	0.577	2023, 2024
Austria AUT	41.4%	1.68	2023, 2024
Ireland IRL	41.2%	1.59	2023, 2024
Norway NOR	39.5%	1.95	2022, 2024
Germany DEU	38.7%	1.63	2022, 2024
Romania ROU	38.1%	0.371	2023, 2024
Denmark DNK	37.5%	2	2022, 2024
Greece GRC	36.9%	0.298	2023, 2024
Portugal PRT	36.5%	1.07	2023, 2024

OECD databases as named on each indicator: PISA, Social Expenditure Database (SOCX), Income Distribution Database, Development Assistance Committee statistics, Family Database, Government at a Glance, Corporate Tax Statistics, employment and environment statistics
Kaufmann, D. and A. Kraay, Worldwide Governance Indicators, World Bank

Sources

Redistribution

Reduction in the Gini coefficient from taxes and transfers

OECD · via Our World in Data · CC BY 4.0 (OECD terms and conditions) · updated annual, except the snapshots noted per indicator · comparable from 2011 only

The Gini before taxes and payments minus the Gini after them, as a share of the first. It shows how much of the inequality produced by the market the government removes. It is built from the before-tax Gini above, so their pair is built from the same numbers and flagged. No "better" direction is set: a country may redistribute little because its market incomes are already equal.

Rule of law

Rule of Law (estimate)

World Bank · CC BY 4.0 · updated annual

How this was computed

Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2011–2024. To adjust for income, each measure is first predicted from GDP per person (in percentage terms, on a log scale) with a straight-line fit. Only what is left over is then compared. This is called a partial correlation. The line is drawn the standard way (ordinary least squares), which picks the line that comes closest to all the countries at once. The error margins allow for countries in the same region resembling each other, using 7 World Bank regions. The q-value corrects for testing all 12,497 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated DYB 2024. How the country data works · explore Redistribution and Rule of law

This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Redistribution changes Rule of law, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.