Pro-poor and inclusive growth in West Africa

Opeoluwa Adeniyi Adeosun and Mosab I. Tabash

African Journal of Economic and Management Studies, 2021, vol. 13, issue 1, 105-135

Abstract: Purpose - This paper focuses on three key metrics of poverty, income distribution and employment to ascertain the pro-poor and inclusive-growth position of the western African region. The roles of governance structures and their interactive effects are also accommodated to capture the peculiarity of the region. Design/methodology/approach - The paper employs fixed and dynamic models. Findings - Evidence suggests that growth is pro-poor, although virtually all governance indicators are sterile in stimulating poverty reduction. The authors observe that health and education spending coupled with trade-openness stimulate pro-poor growth potentials, whereas conflicts culminate the pervasiveness of poverty in the region. By empirically answering the question of how inclusive is economic growth through the lens of income-distribution and employment, the authors show that growth has been exclusive as per-capita-GDP growth rather dampens income shared by the poorest 20%. Also, it is observed that growth has not been inclusive as the jobless-growth argument remains valid while high inequality further exacerbates unemployment in the region. It is further shown that governance has been generally weak in propelling inclusive growth except where the institutional-component of governance stimulates inclusive growth through improvement in equality and labor employability. Originality/value - The study jointly examines the metrics of poverty, income distribution and employment to ascertain growth pro-poorness and inclusivity which are key for the achievement of African-union (AU) agenda 2063. The study captures cross-sectional dependence among selected countries which previous studies ignored.

Keywords: Poverty; Inequality; Employment; Governance; Fixed-dynamic modelling; Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

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:eme:ajemsp:ajems-08-2021-0359

DOI: 10.1108/AJEMS-08-2021-0359

Access Statistics for this article

African Journal of Economic and Management Studies is currently edited by Prof John Kuada

More articles in African Journal of Economic and Management Studies from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().