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This paper proposes a new type of growth rate, called the “poverty equivalent growth rate” (PEGR), which takes into account both the growth rate in mean income and how the benefits of growth are distributed between the poor and the non-poor. The proposed measure satisfies a basic requirement that the proportional reduction in poverty is a monotonically increasing function of the PEGR. Thus, maximizing the PEGR implies a maximum reduction in poverty. The paper demonstrates that the magnitude of PEGR determines the pattern of growth: whether growth is pro-poor in relative or absolute sense or is “poverty reducing” pro-poor. The pattern of growth has been analyzed for Brazil using the National Household Survey (PNAD) covering the period 1995–2005. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Different economic growth episodes display very different distributional characteristics, both across countries and over time. Growth is sometimes accompanied by rising and sometimes by falling inequality. Applied economists have come to rely on the growth incidence curve, which gives the quantile‐specific rate of income growth over a certain period, to describe these differences. This paper introduces a mean‐independent analogue, the delta Lorenz curve, which gives the cumulative change in income share up to each quantile. We also develop estimation and inference procedures for both functions of quantiles. We establish the limiting null distribution of the test statistics of interest for those functions, and propose resampling methods to implement inference in practice. The proposed methods are used to compare the growth processes in the USA and Brazil during 1995–2007. Although growth in the average real wages was disappointing in both countries, the distribution of that growth was markedly different. In the USA, wage growth was mediocre for the bottom 80% of the sample, but much more rapid for the top 20%. In Brazil, conversely, wage growth was rapid below the median, and negative at the top. Wage shares fell in the USA up to the 83rd percentile, and rose in Brazil up to the 65th percentile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Political institutions are an essential component to explain income variation. Brazilian municipalities are characterized by a great contrast in the colonization process and its impacts on the current income level and distribution, and other development aspects. This study analyzes the spatial heterogeneity of the relationship between institutional quality and the municipalities' economic development. We use a spatial moving window method applied to weighted regressions—Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR). We find evidence that good institutions increase income and other variables related to economic development. In addition, the institutional quality influence on economic development measures is distinct across the Brazilian regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We look at two emerging economies, Brazil and China, and propose an evaluation of their recent development in terms of growth performance and the evolution of income inequality. Our analysis, therefore, is related to the literature on their recent vast growth and also to the much debated Kuznets curve and theory. However, we claim that neither the growth nor the Kuznets approach capture recent relevant phenomena characterizing such countries' dynamics: namely, the presence of at least two distinct growth models. Cointegration analysis and empirical evidence seem to corroborate our interpretation. They also offer some further insights. We surmise that while contributing to press for a further re-examination of convergence in the light of the issue of income distribution, such findings have interpretative relevance and policy implications for other less developed countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]