Cointegration Growth, Poverty and Inequality in Sudan

This analytical review explores the links between growth, poverty and inequality in Sudan for the period 1956-2003. This paper build upon different models to investigate empirically the relationship between economic growth - as measured by GDP per capita growth- and inequality as measured by Gini coefficient (the growth, inequality and poverty triangle hypotheses), using data from the national and international sources. The paper tries to answer the following questions: i) whether growth, inequality and poverty are cointegrated, ii) whether growth Granger causes inequality, iii) and whether inequality Granger causes poverty. Finally, a VAR is constructed and impulse response functions (IRFs) are employed to investigate the effects of macroeconomic shocks. The results suggest that growth; poverty and inequality are cointegrated when poverty and inequality are the dependent variable, but are not cointegrated when growth is the dependent variable. In the long-run the causality runs from inequality, p verty to growth, and to poverty, while in the short-run causal effects, runs from poverty to growth. Thus, there is unidirectional relationship, running from growth to poverty, both in the long- run and short run.