Unequal opportunity, unequal growth

Gustavo Marrero, Juan Rodríguez and Roy van der Weide ()

No 7853, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: This paper argues that inequality can be both good and bad for growth, depending on what inequality and whose growth. Unequal societies may be holding back one segment of the population while helping another. Similarly, high levels of income inequality may be due to a variety of different factors; some of these may be good while others may be bad for growth. The paper tests this hypothesis by ?unpacking? both inequality and growth. Total inequality is decomposed into inequality of opportunity, due to observed factors that are beyond the individual's control, and residual inequality. Growth is measured at different steps of the income ladder to verify whether low, middle, and top income households fare differently in societies with high (low) levels of inequality. In an application to the United States covering 1960 to 2010, the paper finds that inequality of opportunity is particularly bad for growth of the poor. When inequality of opportunity is controlled for, the importance of total income inequality is dramatically reduced. These results are robust to different measures of inequality of opportunity and econometric methods.

Keywords: Equity and Development; Pro-Poor Growth; Achieving Shared Growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-10-11
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/473031476192890227/pdf/WPS7853.pdf (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:wbk:wbrwps:7853

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roula I. Yazigi ().