Inequality, Income And Poverty

Analysing a large sample of 1980 - 2004 unbalanced panel data, the current paper presents comparative global evidence on the role of (income) inequality in poverty reduction. The evidence involves both an indirect channel via the tendency of high inequality to decrease the rate at which income is transformed to poverty reduction and the tendency of rising inequality to increase poverty. Based on the basic needs approach, an analysis-of-covariance model is estimated, with the headcount measure of poverty as the dependent variable and the Gini coefficient and PPP-adjusted mean income as explanatory variables.