Incomes in the poorest two quintiles on average increase at the same rate as overall average incomes. This is because, in a global dataset spanning 118 countries over the past four decades, changes in the share of income of the poorest quintiles are generally small and uncorrelated with changes...

Social welfare functions that assign weights to individuals based on their income levels can be used to document the relative importance of growth and inequality changes for changes in social welfare. In a large panel of industrial and developing countries over the past 40 years, most of the...

China has been the most rapidly growing economy in the world over the past 25 years. This growth has fueled a remarkable increase in per capita income and a decline in the poverty rate from 64 percent at the beginning of reform to 10 percent in 2004. At the same time, however, different kinds of...

(June 2001) - The evidence from individual cases and from cross-country analysis supports the view that globalization leads to faster growth and poverty reduction in poor countries. To determine the effect of globalization on growth, poverty, and inequality, Dollar and Kraay first identify a...

When average incomes rise, the average incomes of the poorest fifth of society rise proportionately. This holds across regions, periods, income levels, and growth rates. But relatively little is known about the broad forces that account for the variations across countries and across time in the...