This paper estimates income gap ratios and Gini coefficients of poor Americans and combines them with official U.S. government poverty statistics to create a new time series of Sen indices of poverty. The effects of growth and other determinants of aggregate poverty are investigated over the...

The idea that high levels of economic inequality negatively affect the rate and sustainability of economic growth is quite popular in the scientific literature. Therefore, it is usually proposed to take some regulative measures to reduce economic inequality in order to boost economic growth....