Title: A poverty-inequality trade-off?
First published: 2005
Description: "The idea that developing countries face a trade-off between poverty and inequality has had considerable influence on thinking about development policy.  The experience of developing countries in the 1990s does not, however, reveal any sign of a systematic trade-off between measures of absolute poverty and relative inequality.  Indeed, falling inequality tends to come with falling poverty incidence.  And rising inequality appears more likely to be putting a brake on poverty reduction than to be facilitating it.  However, there is evidence of a trade-off for absolute inequality, suggesting that those who want a lower absolute gap between the rich and the poor must in general be willing to see lower absolute levels of living for poor people. "--World Bank web site.
Subjects: Poverty, Equality, Income distribution
Places: Developing countries
LC classification: HG3881.5.W57