Macroeconomic Adjustment and the Poor : Analytical Issues and Cross-Country Evidence

The author studies the links between macroeconomic adjustment and poverty. First, he summarizes some of the recent evidence on poverty in the developing world. Second, he reviews the various channels through which macroeconomic policies affect the...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Agénor, Pierre-Richard
Format: Policy Research Working Paper
Language:English
en_US
Published: World Bank, Washington, D.C. 2013
Subjects:
Online Access:http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2002/02/1723034/macroeconomic-adjustment-poor-analytical-issues-cross-country-evidence
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/14856
Description
Summary:The author studies the links between macroeconomic adjustment and poverty. First, he summarizes some of the recent evidence on poverty in the developing world. Second, he reviews the various channels through which macroeconomic policies affect the poor. Third, the author emphasizes the role of the labor market. He develops an analytical framework that captures some of the main features of the urban labor market in developing countries and studies the effects of fiscal adjustment on wages, employment, and poverty. Fourth, he presents cross-country regressions linking various macroeconomic and structural variables to poverty. The author finds that output growth and real exchange rate depreciations tend to lower poverty, while illiteracy, income inequality, and macroeconomic volatility tend to increase poverty. In addition, the impact of growth on poverty appears to be asymmetric, and to result from a significant relationship between episodes of increasing poverty and negative growth rates.