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AbstractRecent literature reports that foreign aid contributes to economic growth when economic policies are good. This paper claims that aid can contribute not just to growth but also to pro‐poor growth, through increasing the responsiveness of social indicators to economic growth. The empirical evidence we present is in favour of this claim, suggesting that both aid itself and a recipient government's budget share allocated to social services tend to increase the (absolute) size of the income elasticity of poverty and infant mortality, and that, moreover, aid tends to increase this budget share. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Recently the depth and severity of extreme poverty in Nigeria has been alarming. And over the years, the government undertook some macroeconomic policies with the aim of reducing, if not totally eradicating poverty. These policies were expected to at least raise the standard of living of Nigerians. The impact of these policies on alleviating poverty has been contentious. Some studies in the past have argued that the poor has benefited more from these policies while some found that there was positive real growth yet poverty and inequality still worsened. This can be traced to the nature of growth pursued and the macroeconomic policies that underline it. This study empirically evaluates macroeconomic policies vis-?-vis pro-poor growth in Nigeria using secondary data covering the period 1960-2000. The study found among others that economic growth in Nigeria has been slightly pro-poor. This implied that growth was actually weakly pro-poor. Also, those that are far below the poverty line have not really been enjoying the benefits of growth. Infact, the benefits getting to them has been decreasing at an increasing rate. More so, economic growth in rural areas will be slightly more pro-poor than in urban areas. Overall, growth in Nigeria is not necessarily always pro-poor.

A widely accepted criterion for the pro-poorness of an income growth pattern is that it should reduce a (chosen) measure of poverty by \textit{more} than if all incomes were growing equi-proportionately. Inequality reduction is not generally seen as either necessary or sufficient for pro-poorness. As empirical income distributions fit well to the lognormal form, lognormality has sometimes been assumed in order to determine analytically the poverty effects of income growth. We show that in a lognormal world, growth is pro-poor in the above sense, if and only if it is inequality-reducing. It follows that lognormality may not be a good paradigm by means of which to examine pro-poorness issues. In contrast, some popular 3-parameter forms offer the ability to conduct nuanced investigation of the pro-poorness growth-inequality nexus.

The objective of this investigation is to analyze the problem of poverty and income inequality in Mexico, in the context of the process of democratization that the country has experienced in the last three decades, using the pro-poor economic growth methodology of Kakwani & Pernia (2000); Ravallion (2008) and Ravallion & Chen (2001), as well as the so-called equalizing effect of Acemoglu et al. (2013), where democratization promotes policies in favor of the poor, improving redistribution and reducing inequality. The period 1992-2014 is analyzed, which, in the political sphere, marks the transition from non-democracy to democracy. The results suggest that economic growth has been in favor of the poor, although, not in a strict sense, since there is not an observable improvement of income distribution. ; El objetivo de esta investigación es analizar el problema de la pobreza y la desigualdad del ingreso en México, en el contexto del proceso de democratización que ha experimentado el país en las tres últimas décadas, utilizando la metodología de crecimiento económico pro-pobre de Kakwani & Pernia (2000); Ravallion (2008) y Ravallion & Chen (2001), así como el llamado efecto igualador de Acemoglu et al. (2013), donde la democratización promueve políticas a favor de los pobres, mejorando la redistribución y reduciendo la desigualdad. Se analiza el periodo 1992-2014, que, en el plano político, marca la transición de no-democracia a la democracia. Los resultados sugieren que el crecimiento económico ha sido a favor de los pobres, aunque no en sentido estricto, pues no se observa mejoramiento de la distribución del ingreso.

This thesis contributes to the econometric approach to pro-poor growth. It presents theoretical and empirical contributions. First, it presents the different definitions, indices and the policies of pro-poor growth proposed in the theoretical literature. It also examines the theoretical and empirical models on the interactions between income distribution and growth. It shows that the traditional measures, in addition to their partial characters, can lead to contradictory results. To avoid these limits this thesis emphasizes the alternative approach by using econometric models. The latter approach, although it has the advantage of including all the dimensions of poverty, suffering from two types of bias: selection bias and bias of endogeneity. These are due to the limitations of the data: measurement error, outliers. In addition, the results obtained with this approach are sensitive to selected functional forms. So, There are good reasons to use the Gini regression. Unfortunately, the Gini regressions existed only cross sectional and time series. Thus, in a second time, this thesis proposes to extend the Gini regression on the panel. It introduces within and between estimators, the individual effect test and the Gini Aitken estimator. Finally, this thesis presents empirical applications that illustrate the robustness of our estimators. She is particularly interested in the consequences of the estimation method and the sample section. It concludes that the growth process promotes poverty reduction when income inequalities are overcome. But also, the impact of agricultural growth on poverty reduction varies depending on the country's level of development. ; Cette thèse contribue à l'approche économétrique de la croissance pro-pauvre. Elle présente des apports théoriques et empiriques. En premier lieu, elle présente les différentes définitions, indices et politiques de croissance pro-pauvre proposées dans la littérature théorique. Elle examine également les modèles théoriques et empiriques portant sur les ...