International Economics

<< N°161

  N°161  
Issue Q1 2020  
Inequality, poverty and economic growth  
Robert Breunig
Omer Majeed
 
Recent research has highlighted a negative impact of inequality on economic growth. We re-evaluate this hypothesis focusing on both inequality and poverty and their interaction. We replicate previous results showing that inequality has a negative impact on growth. However, we show that when we account for both inequality and poverty, the negative effect of inequality on growth appears to be concentrated amongst countries with high poverty. This would argue for policies targeted towards alleviating poverty even if they have no effect on inequality. Abstract

   
Inequality ; Economic growth ; Poverty ; Cross-country regressions ; Keywords
O47 ; D63 ; I39 ; JEL classification
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