Table 1.

Review of the literature on the governance-vaccination nexus.

Study	Subject of investigation	Approach	Findings
Effect of corruption on the health sector
Achim et al.27	Effect of corruption on population health	Pooled OLS 185 countries (54 high-income and 131 low-income countries) Period of the analysis: 2005–2017	Higher levels of corruption are negatively associated with physical health (expressed as life expectancy and Mortality rate) and mental health (expressed by happiness)
Habibov26	Effect of corruption on healthcare satisfaction in transitional countries	OLS regression and two-stage 2SLS regression Use the “Life in Transition Survey” Observations: (N = 8655) in 12 post-socialist countries	Negative relationship between corruption and healthcare satisfaction
Hanf et al.24	Effect of corruption on national under-five mortality rate	Multivariate linear regression modelling 178 countries Cross-sectional	Positive effect of corruption on child mortality Authors estimate that more than 140,000 annual children deaths could be indirectly attributed to corruption
Holmberg and Rothstein40	Effect of quality of government on population health	Multivariate linear regression > 120 countries cross-sectional	Higher levels of the QoG index are positively associated with life expectancy and higher levels of subjective health feelings Complementary, higher levels of the QoG index were negatively associated with mortality rates for children and mothers
Lio and Lee41	Effect of corruption on five indicators for population health	Ordinary least squares (OLS), fixed-effects 119 countries for the period 2005–2011	Lower levels of corruption are positively associated with: Longer life expectancy Lower infant mortality rate Lower under-five mortality rate
Sommer21	Investigate the effect of the interaction between health expenditure and corruption in the executive and in the public sectors on infant and child mortality	Two-way fixed effects models 90 lowand middle-income countries timeframe: 1996 to 2012 Panel data	Negative interaction effect of corruption and health expenditure on child and infant mortality
Effect of corruption on the health sector—focus on immunization
Azfar and Gurgur28	Effect of corruption on health outcomes	Random effects, tobit, ordinary-least Philippines: Survey data	Corruption reduces immunization rates and delays the vaccination of newborns. One standard deviation (≈10%) increase in corruption reduces the immunization rate by approximately 11–19% Effect of corruption on health outcomes depends on the geography of the regions (rural/urban) Lower-income strata were more affected by corruption
Factor and Kang29	Developing a theoretical framework for understanding the impact of corruption. Analyzing the effects of corruption on different health indicators such as immunization	Structural equation models 133 countries	Higher corruption is associated with lower levels of health expenditures as a percentage of GDP per capita, and with poorer health outcomes in general Corruption has negative effect on DPT immunization rates
Goel and Nelson44	Examine socio-economic driver of two dependent variables; administration and delivery efficiency of Covid-19 vaccines	OLS regression 50 States of the United States Data was collected for two different periods (12. January and 2. February 2021)	Nursing homes per capita, Covid-19 deaths and amount of health workers are positively associated with the delivery efficiency of Covid-19 vaccines Centralized public health agency is associated with vaccination efficiency Corruption (5-year average) shows positive effect for both dependent variables but no statistical significance for the variable which captures the dissemination of vaccinations in the second time period (2. February 2021)
Li et al.25	Investigate the effect of corruption on health outcomes/dependent variables were among others DPT immunization and measles immunization	Ordinary least squares (OLS), fixed-effects and two-stage least squares (2SLS) estimation methods, ≈ 150 countries/cross-country panel data	Negative effect of corruption on health outcomes such as DPT and measles immunization