What is Pro-poor Growth?
Abstract
This paper attempts to explain the concept of “pro-poor growth”, and argues that it represents a major departure from the “trickle-down” phenomenon. It proposes a new indicator—the pro-poor growth index—that measures the degree to which growth can be considered to be pro-poor. The new indicator is used to analyze the nature of economic growth in three countries, namely, Republic of Korea, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, and Thailand.
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This paper has benefited from many interdepartmental comments and suggestions, in particular, those from T. Duncan, S. Hutaserani, Y. Iwasaki, P. Kruzic, L. Kulp, J.S. Lee, W. Liepach, S. Mundle, B. Prakash, P. Rajapakse, J. Weiss, and J. Zveglich. It has also incorporated comments made at an EDRC Seminar on Towards Operationalizing the Concept of Pro-poor Growth on 14 June 2000. This paper could not have been completed without the assistance of Hyun Son, a Ph.D. student at the University of New South Wales.
