New tools allow one to study the incidence of economic growth by initial level of income, and to measure the rate of pro-poor growth in an economy. An application is provided using data for China in the 1990s

"It has been argued that inequality should be of little concern in poor countries on the grounds that (1) absolute poverty in terms of consumption (or income) is the overriding issue in poor countries, and (2) the only thing that really matters to reducing absolute income poverty is the rate of...