Can Africa Reduce Poverty by Half by 2015? The Case for a Pro-Poor Growth Strategy

Arne Bigsten () and Abebe Abebe

No 177, Working Papers in Economics from University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics

Abstract: This study uses simulations to explore the possibility of halving the percentage of people living in extreme poverty in Africa by 2015. A pro-poor growth-scenario and a constant-inequality scenario are compared. It is shown that initial levels of inequality and mean per capita income determine the cumulative growth and inequalityreduction required to achieve the target. The trade-off between growth and inequality varies greatly among countries and their policy-choices are thus quite different. In some cases small changes in income-distribution can have a large effect on poverty, while in others a strong focus on growth is the only viable option.

Keywords: Poverty; pro-poor growth; millennium development goals; Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I32 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2005-08-23
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-cmp, nep-dev and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/2077/2743 (text/html)

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:hhs:gunwpe:0177

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers in Economics from University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, Box 640, SE 405 30 GÖTEBORG, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jessica Oscarsson ().