© 1997 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank
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What Can New Survey Data Tell Us about Recent Changes in Distribution and Poverty?
Martin Ravallion and Shaohua Chen are with the Policy Research Department at the World Bank. This project received financial assistance from the World Bank's Poverty and Social Policy Department and the joint British-Dutch-Swedish trust fund for studying the social and environmental consequences of growth-oriented policies. For discussions on this topic and comments on the paper, the authors are grateful to Gaurav Datt, Jyotsna Jalan, Emmanuel Jimenez, Michael Lipton, Oey Meesook, Binayak Sen, Lynne Sherburne-Benz, Dominique van de Walle, Quentin Wodon, participants at various presentations, and three anonymous referees.
It has been claimed that in recent times the poor have lost ground, both relatively and absolutely, even when average levels of living have risen. This article tests that claim using household surveys for 67 developing and transitional economies over 1981–94. It finds that changes in inequality and polarization were uncorrelated with changes in average living standards. Distribution improved as often as it worsened in growing economies, and negative growth was often more detrimental to distribution than positive growth. Overall, there was a small decrease in absolute poverty, although with diverse experiences across regions and countries. Almost always, poverty fell with growth in average living standards and rose with contraction.
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