This paper examines the empirical relationship between inequality and growth, and analyzes the impacts of growth, inequality, and government spending on poverty reduction. A new panel dataset has been assembled on inequality and poverty that reduces measurement error and ensures comparability...

Are improvements in growth in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) since the mid-1990s sustainable? What types of growth strategies contribute the most to reducing poverty? This paper examines these questions in four stages. First, it explores the factors contributing to the post- 1995 improvement in...

This paper describes the nature and evolution of poverty in Nigeria between 1985 and 1992. It highlights the potential wealth of the Nigerian economy and examines how the economic policies pursued in the 1980s and 1990s impacted economic growth and welfare. The headcount measure of poverty in...

Throughout the world, the great popularity of programs to protect those who may fall into poverty stands in contrast with the weakness of policies aimed at helping individuals who are already poor to overcome long-term poverty. In the paper, an OLG model with persistent poverty and limited...

This paper uses the Shapley Value decomposition technique to assess the factors behind the rise of inequality in China. It finds that, in many ways, inequality may have been an inevitable by-product of China’s investment and export-led growth model. Between Chinese households, we find that the...

The paper examines Senegal’s growth performance from the perspective of its povertyreducing and distributional characteristics, and discusses policies that might help make growth more inclusive. The main findings are that poverty has fallen in the last two decades, but poverty reduction has...

The 2007-09 Great Recession has led to an unprecedented increase in public debt in many countries, triggering substantial fiscal adjustments. What are the distributional consequences of fiscal austerity measures? This is an important policy question. This paper analyzes the effects of fiscal...

The paper reviews the Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) approach and efforts to build institutional statistical capacity to permit evidence-based monitoring of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). Integrating the PRS approach and statistical development strategies could provide...

Following the adoption by the international community of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) approach, which provides the basis for concessional lending by the multilateral institutions, there has been a resurgence of interest in the poverty and social impact analysis (PSIA) of different...