Is there any link between corruption and earthquake fatalities? A new study says there could be.
According to an assessment of global earthquake deaths over the past three decades, 83 per cent of all deaths caused by building collapses during quakes occurred in countries considered to be unusually corrupt.
The study, conducted by Professor Nicholas Ambraseys of the Imperial College of London and Professor Roger Bilham of the University Colorado at Boulder, also found that in some wealthy countries, the collapse of buildings is attributable to corrupt building practices.
Corrupt building practices — which are generally covert and hard to quantify — included the use of substandard materials, poor assembly methods, the inappropriate placement of buildings and non-adherence to building codes, the authors noted in the journal Nature.
For their research, the authors used data gathered by world corruption watchdog Transparency International which annually generates a Corruption Perception Index, or CPI.
The CPI index — which defines corruption as the abuse of entrusted power for private gain — is determined by an aggregate of 13 opinion polls averaged over two years from 10 institutions monitoring the frequency and extent of bribes paid within various countries, said Prof. Bilham.
—PTI