It is often claimed that high salaries attract better politicians. But is it true?

Economic theory suggests the question should be a slam dunk.

According to the principles of supply and demand, higher salaries would attract people already working in highly-paid jobs outside politics, making politics more competitive and increasing the pool of highly qualified election candidates. 

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. 

The first issue with the theory is that ‘better’ is a subjective term. What kind of ‘better’ politician are we hoping to attract? Better educated? Harder working? More diverse? 

The second big problem is that political jobs generally come with a range of non-salary benefits (allowances, power, social status, etc.). The job of a politician also requires significant personal sacrifices and commitments. Few candidates will likely base their decision to stand for election on salary alone.

Better educated?

There is some research showing higher salaries attract better-educated politicians though the evidence is mixed. 

In Brazil, for example, a pay rise for local politicians improved both education levels and work rates of legislators, according to a 2008 study. 

In Finland, higher salaries resulted in more female candidates with higher educational achievements but didn’t improve the quality of male candidates. 

Other studies suggest raising political salaries won’t do anything to improve the educational standards of legislators – and may even backfire.

This 2013 Canadian study, for example, looked back at two pay increases for Canadian MPs – the first in 1963 and another in 2001 – specifically aimed at attracting young, well-educated and professionally-qualified candidates. 

The pay rise experiment failed.

Canadian MPs did not become younger, more educated or better qualified, the researchers found, and there was “little evidence” that the reforms achieved their stated objectives.

The researchers’ explanation for the failure seems obvious in hindsight. Higher salaries may attract higher-quality candidates to stand for election, they said, but “they also provide strong incentives for poorly qualified individuals to enter politics”. 

Another possible reason the pay rise didn’t work as intended was that Canadian politicians were already paid highly enough and “additional increases generate only small marginal effects”, the researchers said. 

When some members of the European Parliament were given a big pay rise in the early 2000s, education levels went backwards. The chance that an MEP had attended a top university reduced when salaries doubled, the researchers found. 

But do we need more highly-educated politicians anyway? 

Politicians with degrees are already massively over-represented in many national parliaments. 

In the US, for example, around 95% of members of congress have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to around one-third of Americans as a whole. 

In Australia, around 80% of federal politicians have a degree compared to just a quarter of the people they represent.

In the UK, around 85% of MPs have degrees compared to around 25% of the general population. 

In Brazil, where the average legislator has completed less than 10 years of schooling (according to the 2008 study cited above), improving the educational standards of legislators may well be a worthy aim. 

In countries where highly-educated politicians already make up the vast majority of the legislature, what is the benefit of having even more of them? 

More diverse?

Ironically, higher salaries are sometimes touted as a way of improving diversity in parliament but those claims also lack evidence.

This 2016 US study investigated whether higher salaries encouraged more people from working-class backgrounds into state and local politics but found the opposite may be true. 

“Reformers often argue that the low salaries paid in many of our political institutions ensure that only the wealthy can afford to run for office and that offering higher salaries would attract more middle and working-class Americans,” the researchers said. 

“Our analyses suggest that this line of reasoning doesn’t hold much water [and] in states that offer leaders higher salaries, working-class politicians are actually crowded out by career political professionals,” they said. 

Less corruption?

Another argument for high political salaries is that well-paid politicians are supposedly less susceptible to corruption. 

The ‘higher pay equals less corruption’ theory needs its own blog post. But in short, one does not necessarily lead to the other. 

Countries with very highly-paid politicians – measured as a proportion of local average incomes – also tend to score very poorly on corruption indices. 

Kenya, for example, has some of the highest-paid politicians in the world when measured as a proportion of GDP per capita but also has a huge problem with political corruption.

If it were true that high salaries deter political corruption, Kenya would surely have the most honest politicians in the world.

More candidates?

Peverill Squire, a politics professor at the University of Missouri, has pointed out that US state legislatures that paid low salaries had more uncontested seats than legislatures offering higher salaries. 

“In Georgia, for example, state lawmakers earn less than $18,000 annually and 80% of legislative seats go uncontested,” he wrote in a 2016 testimony to a New York Commission considering public sector salaries.

At a national level, this is less likely to be a problem. 

At the Australian federal election held in May 2022, 1624 candidates put themselves forward for a total of 191 vacant spots in the House of Representatives and the Senate (all 151 lower house seats plus 40 of Australia’s 76 senate seats were up for reelection).  

In Australia at least – where federal politicians are among the highest-paid in the world – there is no shortage of people vying for a seat at the top table. 

Whether or not those candidates could be considered ‘high quality’ is a matter of opinion. 

But the evidence suggests offering even more money would do little to attract better ones.