As countries become richer, on average the incidence of income poverty falls and other well-being indicators improve as well. For these reasons, economic growth can be a powerful tool for human development. Nonetheless countries with similar rates of economic growth can have very different rates of poverty reduction and growth often comes with increasing inequality.
Impressive body of research on the growth-inequality nexus has long been made available by economists, including non-linear relationship and two-ways relationship, and investigating under which conditions the growth is inclusive, therefore also the most fragile groups benefit from economic expansion. Yet, the present trends deserve attention. Over the last three decades, inequality in income distribution has grown in most developed countries, whose working classes are affected by the new geography of global production, and in several middle-income countries and emerging economies, notably in the world’s most populous countries – China and India – in particular. Conversely, income inequality between countries has declined, at least in relative terms, mostly due to performances of some emerging economies, which also resulted in worldwide poverty reduction.
OEET research addresses these topics with a broad set of comparative and empirical tools, including new datasets and increasing availability of measures of inequality.
Reference Members
Selected published works
- Complementary or adverse? Comparing development results of official funding from China and traditional donors in Africa
- Economic growth in emerging economies: what, who and why
- Free to escape? Economic freedoms, growth and poverty traps.
- Income concentration in China: what role for education?
- Is the slowdown of China's economic growth affecting multidimensional well-being dynamics?
- New evidence on the link between ethnic fractionalization and economic freedom
- OEET Seminar - Development in times of Industry 4.0: Prospects, Pitfalls and Policies
- OEET Seminar - Social Trust and Firms Innovation in Chinese Provinces
- Poverty, emergence, boom and affluence: a new classification of economies
- Some new evidence on economic freedom and income distribution
- Structural change and wage inequality in the manufacturing sector: long run evidence from East Asia.
- The Chinese economy: recent trends and policy issues.
- The Economic Rise of Asia: Japan, Indonesia and South Korea
- Towards a ‘harmonious society’? Multidimensional development and the convergence of Chinese provinces
Work in progress