Pro-Poor Growth Meets Dualistic Development

In: Journal of income distribution: an international journal of social economics

Abstract

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.