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This paper examines trends in income distribution and its linkages to economic growth and poverty reduction in order to understand the prospects for achieving poverty reduction in Africa. We examine the levels and trends in income distribution in some African countries and calculate pro-poor growth indices. Different growth patterns are simulated for Ethiopia, Uganda, Mozambique, and South Africa. We conclude that the balance between policies aimed at growth and measures aimed at redistribution should depend on the elasticity of the growth-equity tradeoff. We also discuss what the appropriate ingredients of a pro-poor strategy would be in the African setting.

This paper examines to what extent gender gaps in education, health, employment, productive assets and inputs can affect pro poor growth (in the sense of increasing monetary incomes of the poor). After discussing serious methodological problems with examining gender issues in the context of an income-based pro-poor growth framework, the paper considers theory and evidence on the impact of gender inequality on pro poor growth. While there is a considerable literature suggesting negative impacts of gender gaps on growth, there is much less information on the impact of gender gaps on inequality. The paper then examines the experiences of country cases and finds that gender inequality can have a significant effect on pro-poor growth, but that the importance and type of effects differ considerably between different regions. It also appears that the effects of gender gaps on pro-poor growth operate primarily via an impact on growth rather than an impact on distributional change.

Pro-poor growth refers to how incomes change for the poor and for otherswhen economic growth occurs. Dualistic development refers to three typesof economic growth patterns in a two-sector economy: 1) modern sectorenrichment, 2) traditional sector enrichment, and 3) modern sectorenlargement. The question asked in this article is, what can we say aboutthe pro-poorness of each of the three types of dualistic development? Themain conclusion I reach is that pro-poor growth works well for the first twodualistic growth types but runs into some difficulties for the third. Toovercome these problems, I posit some axioms for dualistic development –particularly, by treating pro-richness and pro-poorness as distinct orderings.

This paper looks into the interrelation between economic growth, inequality, and poverty. Using the notion of pro-poor growth, this study examines to what extent the poor benefit from economic growth. First, various approaches to defining and measuring pro-poor growth are scrutinized using a variety of criteria. It is argued that the satisfaction of a monotonicity axiom is a key criterion for measuring pro-poor growth. The monotonicity axiom sets out a condition that the proportional reduction in poverty is monotonically an increasing function of the pro-poor growth measure. This paper proposes a pro-poor growth measure that satisfies the monotonicity criterion. This measure is called the 'poverty equivalent growth rate', which takes into account both the magnitude of growth and how the benefits of the growth are distributed to the poor and the non-poor. As the new measure satisfies the criterion of monotonicity, it is indicative that to achieve a rapid poverty reduction, the poverty equivalent growth rate ought to be maximized rather than the actual growth rate. The methodology developed in the paper is then applied to Asian countries, including the Republic of Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam.

To reveal effects and consequences of high indebtedness on income poverty, this paper explores empirically a linear and non-linear impact of external debt on pro-poor growth in developing and transitional countries. To examine this hypothesis, we test the distribution effect of external debt to GDP, external debt to exports, and debt services to exports on the poorest 20 and 20 to 40 percent in a crosscountry approach. In addition, we estimate the total effect, i.e. the distribution and growth effect, to analyse potential trade-offs between the impact of unsustainable external debt levels on poverty through overall economic growth and via distribution. To test the poverty effects, we collect an irregular and unbalanced panel of time-series cross-country data on the first and second quintile of 58 developing and transitional countries for the period 1970 - 1999. We apply two econometric specifications, a growth equation and a system GMM estimation, to cover econometric issues, cross-country variation and dynamic aspects of within-country changes of the income of the poor. Empirical findings of the impact of the debt indicators on pro-poor growth have to be interpreted carefully due to inconsistent results of the sensitivity analyses. Thus results do not indicate an optimal external debt level with respect to pro?poor growth. On the contrary, higher external debt levels are associated with negative effects on the level of the income of the poorest 40 percent without exhibiting any significant effects on the growth rates. Thus concise policy recommendations with respect to debt sustainability levels and debt relief are difficult. A cautious conclusion would be that debt relief may affect the poor positively, but seems not to be a sufficient policy instrument for improved growth rates of the income of the poorest 40 percent. This policy proposal would be in line with calls for more poverty-targeted capital inflows, as even total debt relief would release only insufficient resources for poverty reducing activities. With this interpretation, however, we abstract from political economy and bad governance issues which may prevent poverty reducing debt relief initiatives.

This article illustrates changing growth regimes in Uganda from pro-poor growth in the 1990s
to growth without poverty reduction, actually even a slight increase in poverty, after 2000.
Not surprisingly, we find that good agricultural performance is the key determinant of direct
pro-poor growth in the 1990s as well as lower agricultural growth is the root cause of the
recent increase in poverty. Yet after 2000, low agricultural growth appears to have induced
important employment shifts out of agriculture, which have dampened the increase in poverty.
We also assess the indirect way of pro-poor growth by analysing the incidence of public
spending and the tax system and find that indirect pro-poor growth has only been achieved to
a limited extend.