IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/rcitxx/v22y2019i3p253-264.html

Panel evidence on the impact of tourism growth on poverty, poverty gap and income inequality

Author

Listed:
  • Renuka Mahadevan
  • Sandy Suardi

Abstract

Using a panel of 13 tourism-intensive economies for the period 1995–2012, this paper shows that rising growth in tourism which is proxied by tourism receipts to GDP ratio has an impact on poverty conditional on the poverty measure used. Using a panel Vector Autoregression method, there is little evidence to suggest that growth in tourism reduces headcount poverty. However, the poverty gap measure shows that the amount of money needed to help the poor out of poverty is significantly reduced. Based on different types of Gini coefficient, the results fail to find an improvement in income inequality resulting from tourism growth. Alternative measures such as relative poverty and poverty gap may be considered to better assess the impact of tourism on the poor.

Suggested Citation

  • Renuka Mahadevan & Sandy Suardi, 2019. "Panel evidence on the impact of tourism growth on poverty, poverty gap and income inequality," Current Issues in Tourism, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(3), pages 253-264, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:rcitxx:v:22:y:2019:i:3:p:253-264
    DOI: 10.1080/13683500.2017.1375901
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13683500.2017.1375901
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13683500.2017.1375901?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

    for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Andriamandroso Herinandrasana Andry & Fouopi Djiogap Constant & Yaya Deome Hamadjoda Lefe, 2025. "Does tourism development matter in reducing income inequality in Africa’s Indian Ocean Island countries?," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 1-14, January.
    2. Jianchun Fang & Giray Gozgor & Sudharshan Reddy Paramati & Wanshan Wu, 2021. "The impact of tourism growth on income inequality: Evidence from developing and developed economies," Tourism Economics, , vol. 27(8), pages 1669-1691, December.
    3. Jiekuan Zhang, 2023. "The nonlinear effects of tourism on rural income inequality and urban–rural income inequality: Evidence from China," Tourism Economics, , vol. 29(1), pages 172-193, February.
    4. Chang Gan & Xinying Sun & Mihai Voda & Kai Wang, 2025. "Does Digitalization Mean Equality? Digital Finance and Balanced Development Between Counties," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 17(18), pages 1-20, September.
    5. Peiying Dang & Linjing Ren & Jie Li, 2024. "Does rural tourism reduce relative poverty? Evidence from household surveys in western China," Tourism Economics, , vol. 30(2), pages 498-521, March.
    6. Carmen María Llorca-Rodríguez & Rosa María García-Fernández & Jorge Chica-Olmo, 2026. "Does tourism reduce socio-economic inequality? Insights from the pandemic based on space and time models for the EU," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 43(1), pages 65-88, April.
    7. Maximo Camacho & Maria del Carmen Ramos-Herrera, 2025. "Does tourism reduce income inequality?," Tourism Economics, , vol. 31(3), pages 381-401, May.
    8. Abda Emam & Hassan Ali-Dinar, 2024. "Tourism’s Influence on Economic Growth and Environment in Saudi: Present and Future," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(21), pages 1-17, November.
    9. Nouf Alnafisah, 2025. "The Role of Tourism Development in Promoting Income Equality: A Case Study of GCC Countries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 17(10), pages 1-26, May.
    10. Mingzhi Xiao & Takara Sakai & Daisuke Murakami & Yuki Takayama, 2025. "When Does Tourism Raise Land Prices? Threshold Effects, Superstar Cities, and Policy Lessons from Japan," Papers 2509.04307, arXiv.org.
    11. Toyo Amègnonna Marcel Dossou & Emmanuelle Ndomandji Kambaye & Festus Victor Bekun & Abalou Omar Eoulam, 2023. "Exploring the linkage between tourism, governance quality, and poverty reduction in Latin America," Tourism Economics, , vol. 29(1), pages 210-234, February.
    12. Yuan Wang & Alexander Tziamalis, 2023. "International tourism and income inequality: The role of economic and financial development," Tourism Economics, , vol. 29(7), pages 1836-1864, November.
    13. Larry Dwyer, 2024. "Tourism Degrowth and Resident Well-being," Journal of Tourism, Sustainability and Well-being, CinTurs - Research Centre for Tourism, Sustainability and Well-being, University of Algarve, vol. 12(3), pages 206-225.
    14. Alejandro Alcalá-Ordóñez & Verónica Segarra, 2025. "Tourism and economic development: A literature review to highlight main empirical findings," Tourism Economics, , vol. 31(1), pages 76-103, February.
    15. Haoyu Shu & Jianping Zha & Rong Ma & Minqing Yan, 2024. "Chance or challenge? Understanding how the Internet affects the nexus between tourism and urban-rural income inequality," Tourism Economics, , vol. 30(8), pages 2089-2110, December.
    16. Panpan Sun & Songshan (Sam) Huang & Ghialy Yap & Zhibin Lin & Lei Zhao, 2026. "Pathways to prosperity: How tourism industry training reduces poverty," Tourism Economics, , vol. 32(1), pages 150-171, February.
    17. Junwook Chi, 2024. "Tourism development and income inequality in OECD countries: New insights from method of moments quantile regression," Tourism Economics, , vol. 30(3), pages 767-784, May.
    18. Jiekuan Zhang, 2023. "Tourism, urbanization, and urban income inequality in China," Tourism Economics, , vol. 29(6), pages 1423-1441, September.
    19. Fubiao Zhu & Xiaona Cao & Delin Zhuang & Shengwu Jin & Xueting Yang, 2024. "Effects of tourism on socio‐economic well‐being and its inter‐regional convergence: Evidence from China's 291 cities," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(3), September.

    More about this item

    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:taf:rcitxx:v:22:y:2019:i:3:p:253-264. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/rcit .

    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.