This paper reviews the empirical evidence on the existence of poverty traps, understood as self-reinforcing mechanisms … through which poor individuals or countries remain poor. Poverty traps have captured the interest of many development policy … makers, because poverty traps provide a theoretically coherent explanation for persistent poverty. They also suggest that …

Growth is pro-poor if the poverty measure of interest falls. This implies three potential sources of pro-poor growth …: (a) a high rate of growth of average incomes; (b) a high sensitivity of poverty to growth in average incomes; and (c) a … poverty-reducing pattern of growth in relative incomes. I empirically decompose changes in poverty in a large sample of …