Does Agricultural Growth Reduce Inequality and Poverty in Developing Countries?

Katsushi Imai, Raghav Gaiha and Wenya Cheng
Additional contact information
Raghav Gaiha: Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi, India and Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard University Boston, USA
Wenya Cheng: School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester, UK

No DP2015-23, Discussion Paper Series from Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University

Abstract: Drawing upon cross-country panel data for developing countries, the present study examines the role of agricultural growth in reducing inequality and poverty by modelling the dynamic linkage between agricultural and non-agricultural sectors. For this purpose, we have compared the role of agricultural growth and that of non-agricultural growth and have found that agricultural growth is more important in reducing poverty, while the negative effect of agricultural growth on inequality is found in a few models where specific definitions of inequality are adopted. The role of agricultural growth in reducing inequality is, however, undermined by ethnic fractionalisation which tends to make inequality more persistent. Our analysis generally reinforces the case for revival of agriculture in the post-2015 discourse, contrary to the much emphasised roles of rural-urban migration and urbanisation as main drivers of growth and elimination of extreme poverty.

Keywords: Inequality; Poverty; Growth; Agriculture; Non-agriculture; MDG; SDG (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C20 I15 I39 O13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2015-06, Revised 2016-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-dev and nep-gro
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.rieb.kobe-u.ac.jp/academic/ra/dp/English/DP2015-23.pdf First version, 2015 (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:kob:dpaper:dp2015-23

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Paper Series from Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University 2-1 Rokkodai, Nada, Kobe 657-8501 JAPAN. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Office of Promoting Research Collaboration, Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University ().