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Pro-poor growth in the 1990s. Lessons and Insights from 14 countries
Author: L Cord
Date: 2005
Size:
116 pages
(5.13 MB)
Access full text: available online
Summary
What policies and country conditions affected the ability of poor people to participate in growth in the 1990s and early 2000s? This report was prepared under the auspices of the Operationalising Pro-Poor Growth research programme, which is co-sponsored by several donors. It contributes to the debate on how to accelerate poverty reduction by providing insights from fourteen country case studies. The results demonstrate a strong link between overall economic growth and the speed of poverty reduction.
In the 1990s, for the first time, growth in the developing world outpaced that in the developed world, leading to a decline in aggregate poverty rates and the number of people living on less than a dollar a day. However, progress has been uneven across regions and rising inequality in the developing world has also created new challenges for meeting international poverty reduction goals. The term pro-poor growth became popular in the late 1990s as economists started to analyse policy packages that could achieve more rapid poverty reduction through growth and distributional change.
Country studies demonstrate the strong link between overall economic growth and the speed of poverty reduction.
- Greater poverty reduction is observed where policies are in place to enhance the capacity of poor people to participate in growth. Several of these policies are the same as those required to foster higher growth.
- Viewing growth through a pro-poor lens is valuable for analysing and addressing the constraints that poor households face in participating in growth. These vary depending on country conditions.
- Particularly relevant among the case studies were: population density and its degree of urbanisation; asset and income inequality; importance of agriculture; climate in and across sectors; fertility; and institutions.
- Agricultural earnings of poor households were raised by improving market access and lowering transaction costs; strengthening property rights for land; creating an incentive framework that benefits all farmers; expanding the technology available to all farmers; and helping poorer and smaller producers deal with risk.
- Access to non-agricultural earnings was enhanced by improving the investment climate; expanding access to secondary and girls’ education; designing labour market regulations to create attractive employment opportunities; and increasing access to infrastructure.
- Ensuring that national planning and strategic processes, such as poverty reduction strategies, take more fully into account the factors discussed in the paper, and how they apply to different countries.
- Implementing policies that enable countries to achieve a higher rate of overall growth.
- Placing measures to achieve sustained and rapid economic growth at the core of a pro-poor growth strategy, including a good investment climate, an attractive incentive framework, well-functioning factor markets and broad access to infrastructure and education.
- Conducting further research into understanding how sectoral mobility might be enhanced, and how to craft public investment strategies to address sub-regional growth and poverty.
- Exploring how public policy can enhance the ability of the poor to participate in and influence government processes.
Access full text: available online
Source:
World Bank, 2005, ‘Pro-poor growth in the 1990s. Lessons and Insights from 14 countries’. Operationalizing Pro-Poor Growth Research Program, The World Bank, Washington
