Is Growth of the Pro-Poor Kind? A `Leftist' Perspective to Pro-Poor Growth Measurement

Pro-poor growth has largely attracted the interest of scholars in the last two decades. Most of the debate has been focusing on (i) the definition of pro-poor growth, and (ii) the identification of effective measurement strategies. In this paper a novel approach to the measurement of pro-poor growth, both in the weak and strong sense, is proposed. Specifically, measures of pro-poor growth are obtained by decomposing the growth rate in such a way as to capture the change in both (i) poverty rate and (ii) income inequality between poor and non-poor individuals. Most importantly, the methodology proposed in this paper is shown to implement an absolute approach to inequality — ‘leftist’ in Kolm’s (Journal of Economic Theory, 12:416-442, 1976) words — which has been arguably disregarded in the existing literature. An empirical validation of the methodological proposal is also reported, as well as the consequences of the ‘leftist’ perspective I opted for is highlighted.