Different episodes of economic growth display widely varying distributional characteristics, both across countries and over time. Growth is sometimes accompanied by rising and sometimes by falling inequality. Applied economists have come to rely on the Growth Incidence Curve, which gives the...

We axiomatically characterize two classes of poverty measures which are sensitive to inequality of opportunity - one a strict subset of the other. The proposed indices are sensitive not only to income shortfalls from the poverty line, but also to differences in opportunities faced by people with...

Widespread agreement that poverty is a multifaceted phenomenon, encompassing deprivations along multiple dimensions, clashes with often vociferous disagreement about how best to measure these deprivations. Drawing on the recent literature, this short note proposes three methodological...

Income differences arise from many sources. While some kinds of inequality, caused by effort differences, might be associated with faster economic growth, other kinds, arising from unequal opportunities for investment, might be detrimental to economic progress. We construct two new metadata...

This paper presents empirical results of a wide range of multidimensional poverty measures for: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Mexico and Uruguay, for the period 1992–2006. Six dimensions are analysed: income, child attendance at school, education of the household head, sanitation,...

The present document examines the role of social and economic transformation in the process of poverty reduction in China. China's economic growth and poverty reduction over the past 40 years are historically unprecedented both in speed and scale. Between 1978 and 2018 China's economy grew at an...

Employment is the main source of income for most families in the world. While it is certainly not a new dimension of well-being, it is sometimes forgotten in human development studies and poverty reduction policies or, at least, not considered in the depth it deserves. This paper proposes seven...

After decades of stagnation, the size of Latin America's middle class recently expanded to the point where, for the first time ever, the number of people in poverty is equal to the size of the middle class. This volume investigates the nature, determinants and possible consequences of this...

The 2001/02 Argentine crisis had a profound impact on Uruguay's economy. Uruguay's gross domestic product shrank by 17.5 percent and the proportion of people living below the poverty line doubled in just two years. It took almost 10 years for the poverty rate to recover to its pre-crisis level....

Income differences arise from many sources. While some kinds of inequality, caused by effort differences, might be associated with faster economic growth, other kinds, arising from unequal opportunities for investment, might be detrimental to economic progress. This study uses two new metadata...