Revisiting the Relationship among Growth, Poverty and Inequality to Comprehend SDGs Pathways : Evidence from Panel Data of 23 Countries

In response to the Millennium Development Goals’ (MDGs) limitations in tackling rising inequality, this issue has been addressed in Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) along with growth and poverty. Though the intertwined relationship among growth, poverty and inequality has already been hypothesized by Kuznets (1955), it is still questioned by many other scholars. To reveal the relationship among growth, poverty and inequality in the aftermath of MDGs’ failures for better understanding the pathways of SDGs, this paper revisits the issue through analysing panel data of 23 countries (from 1990-2014) using Panel Corrected Standard Error (PCSE) procedure and dynamic panel GMM approach. The study found a negative linear relationship among growth and poverty, and ‘U-shaped’ (opposed to Kuznet’s inverted U-shape) non-linear relationship among growth, poverty and inequality; indicating that the inequality will be higher in initial stage of development, with declination in middle stage of development, before starting to rise further. This finding creates an agenda for the academicians to rethink the relationship patterns and theorise the relationship through comprehensive research. Moreover, the pattern is useful for the government as well as international organisations and policy making professionals to formulate and implement effective policies to achieve economic growth, poverty reduction and inequality minimisation in response to the SDGs.Keywords