Pro-poor growth

Policy implications

What policies are required to promote pro-poor growth? The following papers examine what the appropriate policy responses may be.

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
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.
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Unsworth, S.,2003, 'Better Government for Poverty Reduction: More Effective Partnerships for Change', DFID consultation document, Department for International Development, London
Governments are crucial to the enabling environment for poverty reduction. However, some governments – even in formal democracies where most voters are poor – lack the capacity or incentives to promote economic growth and pro-poor policies. This paper asks why, and what aid donors and other outside actors could do to encourage the emergence of better government in poor countries.
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This DFID consultation paper proposes that donors should take more time to analyse the particular institutional environments of the countries they operate in, and that their interventions should be designed accordingly. Studying the social, political and historical context will help identify the underlying factors which could promote or inhibit pro-poor change, and the likely impact of particular policy choices on political and social institutions.

Weeks, J. and Roy, R. 2004, ‘Making Fiscal Policy Work for the Poor. How to Implement Pro-Poor Fiscal Policies in Developing Countries?’ United Nations Development Programme, New York 
What constitutes pro-poor fiscal policy? What fiscal measures are necessary to achieve pro-poor growth? This paper by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is a synthesis of the fiscal policy detailed in seven country studies carried out by the UNDP as part of the Asia-Pacific Programme on Macroeconomics of Poverty Reduction (MPAP). The paper argues that public investment is a key fiscal measure and a necessary component of a pro-poor macro strategy.
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