if it is high then public policies designed to combat poverty based on economic growth will be more effective since in this type of situation boosting income will have a proportionally greater effect in terms of poverty reduction on the other hand if the coefficient of elasticity is low the most appropriate poverty reduction strategies will be those that combine economic growth with some type of income redistribution marinho and araujo their results indicate that if the income level were to rise by in countries with low levels of inequality the poverty rate would fall by whereas in countries with high levels of inequality the same increase in mean income would lead to a drop in the poverty rate they thus conclude that in this latter case growth has no more than a weak impact on poverty levels