Growth, inequality and poverty: A robust relationship?

Gustavo Marrero and Luis Servén

No 478, Working Papers from ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality

Abstract: An extensive literature on poverty traps suggests that high levels of poverty deter growth. However, a seemingly basic implication of the underlying theoretical models, namely that countries suffering from higher levels of poverty should grow less rapidly, has remained untested. A parallel literature has suggested a variety of mechanisms through which inequality may affect growth in opposing directions. Because inequality and poverty are different aspects of the income distribution, inequality can affect growth also through poverty, an indirect channel that has not been explicitly analyzed. This paper contributes to fill both gaps. Using a large cross-country panel dataset, we estimate a reduced-form growth equation adding both inequality and poverty to an otherwise standard set of growth determinants. Given inequality, the correlation of growth with poverty is consistently negative. In contrast, given poverty, the correlation of growth with inequality can be positive or negative, depending on the empirical specification and econometric approach used. Yet the indirect effect of inequality on growth through its correlation with poverty is robustly negative. Closer inspection shows that these results are driven by the sample observations featuring high (but not extremely high) poverty rates. Our empirical findings are consistent with the predictions from an analytical framework with learning-by-doing and knowledge spillovers, in which consumers cannot save and invest if their initial endowment is below a minimum consumption level.

Keywords: Growth; Inequality; Poverty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E25 O11 O15 O40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2018-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gro
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.ecineq.org/milano/WP/ECINEQ2018-478.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Growth, inequality and poverty: a robust relationship? (2022)
Working Paper: Growth, Inequality, and Poverty: A Robust Relationship? (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2018-478

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Maria Ana Lugo ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).