This study contributes to the literature on income inequality by providing evidence that financial development not only impacts income distribution, but the effects can improve when there is a strong institutional framework. Using the system-generalised method of moments (sys-GMM) technique on a sample of 42 Sub-Saharan African
(SSA) countries from 1996 to 2015, our major findings are summarised as follows: (1) inequality is persistent in the region (2) financial development does not significantly reduce income inequality; and (3) the control of corruption and its interaction with domestic
credit exhibit an inverted-U relation with income inequality. Thus, policies that will reduce income inequality require that corruption be controlled given increase in domestic credit
