Coming across an article discussing the salaries of some world leaders, what originally caught my eye as a Russian studies major, was Vladimir Putin's surprisingly low salary. Already knowing how corrupt Russia is and other means by which Putin makes money (i.e. stock in Gazprom), I began to think there would be a correlation between salary and level of corruption, and I think these two graphs begin to show that.

World Leaders' Salaries

I selected these specific countries for several reasons. First, geographical location--I didn't want to limit this to European countries or stereotypically "Western" countries. I tried to provide a mix of Asian, African, South and North American and European countries. However, I also attempted to choose countries that possess economic and/or political power. According to the World Bank, the U.S., China, France, Brazil and Russia are amongst the top ten for highest GDP as of 2013. Singapore, though not as high on the list, does appear in the top 10 countries with highest GDP per capita. South Africa comes in at number 33 for highest GDP, but it holds a good deal of political power, especially in Africa.

Level of Corruption by Country

Transparency International (transparency.org) ranks countries and territories based on how corrupt their public sector is perceived to be with a ranking of 100 being most transparent and clean and 0 being most corrupt. Though Singapore pays its leader a very large salary, it also displays high levels of transparency. Meanwhile, China's leader seems to be deprived, but China shows very low levels of transparency, possibly implying a higher income for the leader in connection with the second highest GDP in the world. These graphs show high levels of correlation between levels of corruption and leaders' salaries with a split between the left and right side of the graph.