, 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 in average income. The variation in changes in quintile shares is … variation in income growth in the poorest quintiles. These findings hold across most regions and time periods and when …

The authors examine the empirical evidence in support of the poverty trap view of underdevelopment. They calibrate … simple aggregate growth models in which poverty traps can arise due to either low saving or low technology at low levels of … development. They then use these models to assess the empirical relevance of poverty traps and their consequences for policy. The …

Growth is pro-poor if the poverty measure of interest falls. According to this definition there are three potential … sources of pro-poor growth: (1) a high rate of growth of average incomes; (2) a high sensitivity of poverty to growth in … average incomes; and (3) a poverty-reducing pattern of growth in relative incomes. The author empirically decomposes changes …

Simple welfare indices such as mean income are ubiquitous but not distribution sensitive. In contrast, existing … individual incomes must be multiplied to attain a given reference level of income. This new index is subgroup decomposable with … can be used as distribution sensitive poverty measures and as inequality measures, with the same simple intuitive units …