The Devil is in the Detail : Growth, Inequality and Poverty Reduction in Africa in the Last Two Decades

The present paper, starting from evidence of low growth-to-poverty elasticity characterizing Africa, purports to identify the distributional changes that limited the pro-poor impact of the last two decades’ growth. Distributional changes that went undetected by standard inequality measures were not...

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Main Authors:	Clementi, Fabio, Fabiani, Michele, Molini, Vasco
Format:	Journal Article
Published:	Oxford University Press 2020
Subjects:	CONSUMPTION DISTRIBUTION POLARIZATION RELATIVE DISTRIBUTION INEQUALITY POVERTY REDUCTION ECONOMIC GROWTH DECOMPOSITION
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33206

id	okr-10986-33206
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-332062021-05-25T10:54:39Z The Devil is in the Detail : Growth, Inequality and Poverty Reduction in Africa in the Last Two Decades Clementi, Fabio Fabiani, Michele Molini, Vasco CONSUMPTION DISTRIBUTION POLARIZATION RELATIVE DISTRIBUTION INEQUALITY POVERTY REDUCTION ECONOMIC GROWTH DECOMPOSITION The present paper, starting from evidence of low growth-to-poverty elasticity characterizing Africa, purports to identify the distributional changes that limited the pro-poor impact of the last two decades’ growth. Distributional changes that went undetected by standard inequality measures were not showing a clear pattern of inequality on the continent. By applying a new decomposition technique based on a non-parametric method—the ‘relative distribution’—we found a clear distributional pattern affecting almost all analysed countries. Nineteen out twenty four countries experienced a significant increase in polarization, particularly in the lower tail of the distribution, and this distributional change lowered the pro-poor impact of growth substantially. Without this unfavorable redistribution, poverty could have decreased in these countries by an additional five percentage points. 2020-01-21T20:21:00Z 2020-01-21T20:21:00Z 2019-08 Journal Article Journal of African Economies 1464-3723 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33206 CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Oxford University Press Publications & Research :: Journal Article Publications & Research Africa Sub-Saharan Africa
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
topic	CONSUMPTION DISTRIBUTION POLARIZATION RELATIVE DISTRIBUTION INEQUALITY POVERTY REDUCTION ECONOMIC GROWTH DECOMPOSITION
spellingShingle	CONSUMPTION DISTRIBUTION POLARIZATION RELATIVE DISTRIBUTION INEQUALITY POVERTY REDUCTION ECONOMIC GROWTH DECOMPOSITION Clementi, Fabio Fabiani, Michele Molini, Vasco The Devil is in the Detail : Growth, Inequality and Poverty Reduction in Africa in the Last Two Decades
geographic_facet	Africa Sub-Saharan Africa
description	The present paper, starting from evidence of low growth-to-poverty elasticity characterizing Africa, purports to identify the distributional changes that limited the pro-poor impact of the last two decades’ growth. Distributional changes that went undetected by standard inequality measures were not showing a clear pattern of inequality on the continent. By applying a new decomposition technique based on a non-parametric method—the ‘relative distribution’—we found a clear distributional pattern affecting almost all analysed countries. Nineteen out twenty four countries experienced a significant increase in polarization, particularly in the lower tail of the distribution, and this distributional change lowered the pro-poor impact of growth substantially. Without this unfavorable redistribution, poverty could have decreased in these countries by an additional five percentage points.
format	Journal Article
author	Clementi, Fabio Fabiani, Michele Molini, Vasco
author_facet	Clementi, Fabio Fabiani, Michele Molini, Vasco
author_sort	Clementi, Fabio
title	The Devil is in the Detail : Growth, Inequality and Poverty Reduction in Africa in the Last Two Decades
title_short	The Devil is in the Detail : Growth, Inequality and Poverty Reduction in Africa in the Last Two Decades
title_full	The Devil is in the Detail : Growth, Inequality and Poverty Reduction in Africa in the Last Two Decades
title_fullStr	The Devil is in the Detail : Growth, Inequality and Poverty Reduction in Africa in the Last Two Decades
title_full_unstemmed	The Devil is in the Detail : Growth, Inequality and Poverty Reduction in Africa in the Last Two Decades
title_sort	devil is in the detail : growth, inequality and poverty reduction in africa in the last two decades
publisher	Oxford University Press
publishDate	2020
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33206
_version_	1764478223103557632

The Devil is in the Detail : Growth, Inequality and Poverty Reduction in Africa in the Last Two Decades

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