I agree with "Corruption is often a symptom of underlying issues and not the cause", but not the first part. I can't say about whole world, but if members of society have a decent social ensurance for the tough times, sphere of influence of corruption should go down, like in Nordics. Does it remove corruption entirely no, does it make less rampant yes.

Would be nice to have a systematic study correlating availability of social protection vs prevalence of corruption and it's overall impact.