IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/globdv/v1y2010i2n1.html

Do Poorer Countries Have Less Capacity for Redistribution?

Author

Listed:
  • Ravallion Martin

Abstract

Development aid and policy discussions often assume that poorer countries have less internal capacity for redistribution in favor of their poorest citizens. The assumption is tested for 90 developing countries. Most countries fall into one of two groups: those with little or no realistic prospect of addressing extreme poverty through redistribution from the "rich" and those that would appear to have ample scope for such redistribution. Economic growth tends to move countries from the first group to the second. Thus the appropriate balance between growth and redistribution strategies can be seen to depend on the level of economic development.

Suggested Citation

  • Ravallion Martin, 2010. "Do Poorer Countries Have Less Capacity for Redistribution?," Journal of Globalization and Development, De Gruyter, vol. 1(2), pages 1-31, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:globdv:v:1:y:2010:i:2:n:1
    DOI: 10.2202/1948-1837.1105
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.2202/1948-1837.1105
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2202/1948-1837.1105?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kakwani, Nanak C, 1977. "Measurement of Poverty and Negative-Income Tax," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(29), pages 237-248, December.
    2. Standing Guy, 2008. "How Cash Transfers Promote the Case for Basic Income," Basic Income Studies, De Gruyter, vol. 3(1), pages 1-30, July.
    3. Amiel,Yoram & Cowell,Frank, 1999. "Thinking about Inequality," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521466967.
    4. Beckerman, W, 1979. "The Impact of Income Maintenance Payments on Poverty in Britain, 1975," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 89(354), pages 261-279, June.
    5. Kanbur, Ravi & Mukherjee, Diganta, 2007. "Poverty, relative to the ability to eradicate it: An index of poverty reduction failure," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 97(1), pages 52-57, October.
    6. Danziger, Sheldon & Gottschalk, Peter & Smolensky, Eugene, 1989. "How the Rich Have Fared, 1973-87," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(2), pages 310-314, May.
    7. Sudhir Anand, 1977. "Aspects Of Poverty In Malaysia," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 23(1), pages 1-16, March.
    8. repec:wbk:wbpubs:2597 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Herwig Immervoll, 2004. "Average and Marginal Effective Tax Rates Facing Workers in the EU: A Micro-Level Analysis of Levels, Distributions and Driving Factors," OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers 19, OECD Publishing.
    10. Shaohua Chen & Martin Ravallion, 2010. "The Developing World is Poorer than We Thought, But No Less Successful in the Fight Against Poverty," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(4), pages 1577-1625.
    11. repec:bla:devpol:v:23:y:2005:i:2:p:131-144 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. S. M. Ravi Kanbur, 1987. "Measurement and Alleviation of Poverty: With an Application to the Effects of Macroeconomic Adjustment (Evaluation quantitative de la pauvreté et remèdes possibles: analyse des effets d'un ajustement macroéconomique) (Medición y alivio de la pobr," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 34(1), pages 60-85, March.
    13. Marcelo Medeiros, 2006. "The Rich and the Poor: The Construction of an Affluence Line from the Poverty Line," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 78(1), pages 1-18, August.
    14. David Robalino & Peter Warr, 2006. "Poverty Reduction through Fiscal Restructuring: An Application to Thailand," Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(3), pages 249-267.
    15. Lant Pritchett, 2006. "Who is Not Poor? Dreaming of a World Truly Free of Poverty," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 21(1), pages 1-23.
    16. repec:wbk:wbpubs:6582 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Vasiliy A. Anikin & Yulia P. Lezhnina & Svetlana V. Mareeva & Ekaterina D. Slobodenyuk & Nataliya N. Tikhonovà, 2016. "Income Stratification: Key Approaches and Their Application to Russia," HSE Working papers WP BRP 02/PSP/2016, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    2. Burchardt, Tania & Vaughan, Michael & Robeyns, Ingrid, 2026. "The bottom line and the top line: insights from poverty measurement for developing an extreme wealth line," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 138719, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. John Quiggin & Renuka Mahadevan, 2015. "The poverty burden: a measure of the difficulty of ending extreme poverty," Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(2), pages 167-177, April.
    4. Alessandra Michelangeli & Eugenio Peluso & Alain Trannoy, 2011. "Detecting a change in wealth concentration without the knowledge of the wealth distribution," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 9(3), pages 373-391, September.
    5. Martin Ravallion, 2018. "Inequality and Globalization: A Review Essay," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 56(2), pages 620-642, June.
    6. Bibi, Sami & Duclos, Jean-Yves, 2007. "Equity and policy effectiveness with imperfect targeting," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 109-140, May.
    7. Sumner, Andy, 2012. "Where Do The Poor Live?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(5), pages 865-877.
    8. Nora Lustig, 2019. "Measuring the Distributional Impact of Taxation and Public Spending: The Practice of Fiscal Incidence Analysis," Commitment to Equity (CEQ) Working Paper Series 24, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    9. Callan, Tim & Nolan, Brian & Whelan, Brendan J. & Hannan, Damian F. & Creighton, S., 1989. "Poverty, Income and Welfare in Ireland," Research Series, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number GRS146.
    10. Facundo Alvaredo & Leonardo Gasparini, 2013. "Recent Trends in Inequality and Poverty in Developing Countries," CEDLAS, Working Papers 0151, CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
    11. La-Bhus Fah Jirasavetakul & Christoph Lakner, 2020. "The Distribution of Consumption Expenditure in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Inequality Among All Africans," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 29(1), pages 1-25.
    12. Segal, Paul, 2011. "Resource Rents, Redistribution, and Halving Global Poverty: The Resource Dividend," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(4), pages 475-489, April.
    13. Anthony B. Atkinson & Andrea Brandolini, 2011. "On the identification of the “middle class”," Working Papers 217, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    14. Edward, Peter & Sumner, Andy, 2014. "Estimating the Scale and Geography of Global Poverty Now and in the Future: How Much Difference Do Method and Assumptions Make?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 67-82.
    15. Ravallion, Martin, 2019. "Global inequality when unequal countries create unequal people," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 85-97.
    16. Das Gupta, Monica & Bongaarts, John & Cleland, John, 2011. "Population, poverty, and sustainable development : a review of the evidence," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5719, The World Bank.
    17. Démurger, Sylvie & Lin, Carl & Schmillen, Achim & Wang, Dewen, 2026. "Falling into poverty or escaping from it? The effect of the minimum wage in urban China," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 198(C).
    18. Michele Peruzzi & Alessio Terzi, 2018. "Growth Accelerations Strategies," Growth Lab Working Papers 112, Harvard's Growth Lab.
    19. Yoram Amiel & Frank Cowell & Liema Davidovitz & Avraham Polovin, 2008. "Preference reversals and the analysis of income distributions," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 30(2), pages 305-330, February.
    20. Paul Allanson & Dennis Petrie, 2014. "Understanding The Vertical Equity Judgements Underpinning Health Inequality Measures," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(11), pages 1390-1396, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • F35 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Aid
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:globdv:v:1:y:2010:i:2:n:1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyterbrill.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.