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Why Growth and Redistribution Matter for Poverty Reduction: Evidence from Sri Lanka on the Elusive Quest for Pro‐Poor Growth
Author(s) -
De Silva Indunil
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of international development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.533
H-Index - 66
eISSN - 1099-1328
pISSN - 0954-1748
DOI - 10.1002/jid.3103
Subject(s) - nexus (standard) , sri lanka , redistribution (election) , poverty , inequality , economics , poverty reduction , development economics , demographic economics , economic growth , socioeconomics , political science , politics , mathematics , mathematical analysis , computer science , law , tanzania , embedded system
This paper decomposes changes in poverty into growth and redistribution components and employs several pro‐poor growth concepts to explore the growth, poverty and inequality nexus in Sri Lanka over the period 1990–2010. We find a ‘trickle‐down’ situation, in which the poor have received proportionately less benefits from growth than the non‐poor. All pro‐poor measures suggest that economic growth in Sri Lanka was particularly beneficial for those located at the top of the distribution. Regression‐based decompositions suggest that variation in expenditure by education characteristics that persist after controlling for other factors to account for around two‐fifths of total household expenditure inequality. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.