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Measuring Pro-Poor Growth in Non-Income Dimensions
Authors: Melanie Grosse, Kenneth Harttgen, Stephan Klasen
Source: World Development, Volume 36, Issue 6, Pages 1021–1047
Topic(s): Economics
Poverty
Country: Latin American/Caribbean
  Bolivia
Published: JUN 2008
Abstract: Current concepts and measures of pro-poor growth are entirely focused on the income dimension of well-being. This neglects non-income dimensions of poverty as well as the multidimensionality of poverty and well-being. In this paper, we extend the pro-poor growth toolbox to individual and composite measures of non-income achievements. In particular, we apply growth incidence curves, the Ravallion–Chen pro-poor growth rate and the poverty-equivalent growth rate to a range of non-income indicators such as education, mortality, vaccinations, stunting, and a multidimensional well-being measure. We are thereby able to study improvements in these dimensions of well-being at various points of the distribution of those indicators as well as at various points of the income distribution. This way we can determine whether improvements in non-income indicators were pro-poor in an absolute or relative sense, and whether they benefited the income poor more than others. We illustrate this empirically for Bolivia during 1989–98.