Is Inequality Systematically Underestimated in Sub-Saharan Africa ? A Proposal toOvercome the Problem

In Africa, evidence on the interactions among poverty, growth, and income distributionpresents a puzzle: While growth has been robust in recent decades, the growth elasticity of poverty has remained low.This suggests that inequality has dampened the pro-poor effects of growth. However, when using standard inequalitymeasures, there is only scattered evidence of high and growing inequality in Africa outside the extremely unequalsouthern cone. This paper argues that inequality mismeasurement could be the main culprit responsible forthis paradox: consumption-based measures miss important information at the top end of the consumption distribution,leading to underestimation of inequality. This paper proposes distinct solutions, arguing that by reevaluatingthe importance of distributional issues in Africa, the need becomes apparent for refreshing the research agenda onAfrican development in such a way that the interaction between poverty and inequality becomes a core concern.