Was Economic Growth in Australia Good for the Income-Poor? and for the Multidimensionally-Poor?

We investigate the pro-poorness of Australias strong economic growth in the fi…rst decade of the XXI century using anonymous and non-anonymous approaches to the measurement of pro-poor growth. The sensitivity of pro-poor growth evaluations to the de…nition of poverty is evaluated by comparing the results for the standard income-poverty measure with those based on a multidimensional de…nition of poverty. We …nd that Australian growth in this period can be only categorized as pro-poor according to the weakest concept of pro-poorness that does not require any bias of growth towards the poor. In addition, our results indicate that growth was clearly more pro-income poor than pro-multidimensionally poor. Counterfactual distribution analysis reveals that di¤erences in the distribution of health between these two groups is the non-income factor that most contributes to explain this result.