Two decades of declining poverty but rising inequality in Laos

Peter Warr, Sitthiroth Rasphone and Jayant Menon ()

No 2018-06, Discussion Papers from University of Nottingham, CREDIT

Abstract: Over the past two decades consumption inequality has risen within Laos, while absolute poverty incidence halved. The estimated Gini coefficient of private household expenditures per person rose from 0.311 to 0.364. This increase in the sample-based estimate of inequality was statistically significant and occurred in all regions, in both rural and urban areas and among all major ethnic, educational and sectoral employment categories. Within-group increases in inequality dominated between-group changes, but official policy largely overlooks this point, focusing on reducing inequality between, rather than within major groups. This assessment argues that economic inequality should become a more pressing policy concern.

Keywords: Expenditure inequality; poverty reduction; Gini coefficient; Laos (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-sea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/credit/documents/papers/2018/18-06.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Two Decades of Declining Poverty but Rising Inequality in Laos (2018)
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:not:notcre:18/06

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from University of Nottingham, CREDIT School of Economics University of Nottingham University Park Nottingham NG7 2RD. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Hilary Hughes ().