Marrero Gustavo A, Servén Luis
Departamento de Economía, Contabilidad y Finanzas, CEDESOG, Universidad de La Laguna, San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Spain.
EQUALITAS, Madrid, Spain.
Empir Econ. 2022;63(2):725-791. doi: 10.1007/s00181-021-02152-x. Epub 2021 Nov 23.
The consequences of poverty and inequality for growth have long preoccupied academics and policy-makers. This paper revisits the inequality-growth and poverty-growth links. Using a panel of 158 countries between 1960 and 2010, we find that the correlation of growth with poverty is consistently negative: A 10 p.p. decrease in the headcount poverty rate is associated with a subsequent increase in per capita GDP between 0.5 and 1.2% per year. In contrast, the correlation of growth with inequality is empirically fragile-it can be positive or negative, depending on the empirical specification and econometric approach employed. However, the indirect effect of inequality on growth through its correlation with poverty is robustly negative. Closer inspection shows that these results are driven by the sample observations featuring high poverty rates.
长期以来，贫困和不平等对增长的影响一直困扰着学者和政策制定者。本文重新审视不平等与增长以及贫困与增长之间的联系。利用1960年至2010年间158个国家的面板数据，我们发现增长与贫困之间的相关性始终为负：贫困人口比例下降10个百分点会导致人均GDP随后每年增长0.5%至1.2%。相比之下，增长与不平等之间的相关性在实证上并不稳定——它可能为正，也可能为负，这取决于所采用的实证设定和计量经济学方法。然而，不平等通过与贫困的相关性对增长产生的间接影响则是稳健的负向影响。进一步考察表明，这些结果是由高贫困率的样本观测值驱动的。
