IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/pseptp/halshs-04330985.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On the social welfare interpretation of growth incidence curves

Author

Listed:
  • Yonatan Berman

    (King‘s College London)

  • François Bourguignon

    (PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement)

Abstract

The Growth Incidence Curve (GIC), introduced in the poverty measurement literature by Ravallion and Chen (Econ. Lett. 78 (1), 93–99, 2003), proved to be a valuable and widely used tool to analyze the impact of growth on poverty and its ‘pro-poorness'. Beyond pro-poorness, however, the relationship between the shape of GICs and social welfare is ambiguous. If a declining GIC, together with a positive overall rate of growth, is unambiguously associated with a social welfare gain, such a shape is not the most common and the reciprocal is not necessarily true. This paper analyzes the social welfare properties of GICs, as well as their non-anonymous counterpart (NAGICs), which describe how income growth depends on the initial rank of individuals in the initial income distribution. NAGICs thus account not only for the change in the distribution of income but also for income mobility, and differ conceptually from their anonymous counterpart. However, their social welfare interpretation proves to be very similar.

Suggested Citation

  • Yonatan Berman & François Bourguignon, 2023. "On the social welfare interpretation of growth incidence curves," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) halshs-04330985, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:pseptp:halshs-04330985
    DOI: 10.1007/s10888-023-09598-2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Flaviana Palmisano & Vito Peragine, 2015. "The Distributional Incidence of Growth: A Social Welfare Approach," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 61(3), pages 440-464, September.
    2. Flaviana Palmisano & Dirk Van de gaer, 2016. "History-dependent growth incidence: a characterization and an application to the economic crisis in Italy," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 68(2), pages 585-603.
    3. Stephen P. Jenkins & Philippe Van Kerm, 2016. "Assessing Individual Income Growth," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 83(332), pages 679-703, October.
    4. François Bourguignon, 2011. "Non-anonymous growth incidence curves, income mobility and social welfare dominance," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 9(4), pages 605-627, December.
    5. Ravallion, Martin & Chen, Shaohua, 2003. "Measuring pro-poor growth," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 78(1), pages 93-99, January.
    6. Florent Bresson & Jean-Yves Duclos & Flaviana Palmisano, 2019. "Intertemporal pro-poorness," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 52(1), pages 65-96, January.
    7. Atkinson, Anthony B., 1970. "On the measurement of inequality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 244-263, September.
    8. Michael Grimm, 2007. "Removing the anonymity axiom in assessing pro-poor growth," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 5(2), pages 179-197, August.
    9. Van Kerm, Philippe, 2009. "Income mobility profiles," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 102(2), pages 93-95, February.
    10. Dasgupta, Partha & Sen, Amartya & Starrett, David, 1973. "Notes on the measurement of inequality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 180-187, April.
    11. repec:bla:econom:v:50:y:1983:i:197:p:3-17 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Son, Hyun Hwa, 2004. "A note on pro-poor growth," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 82(3), pages 307-314, March.
    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. Maria C. Lo Bue & Flaviana Palmisano, 2020. "The Individual Poverty Incidence of Growth," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 82(6), pages 1295-1321, December.
    2. Flaviana Palmisano, 2018. "Evaluating Patterns of Income Growth when Status Matters: A Robust Approach," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 64(1), pages 147-169, March.
    3. Florent Bresson & Jean-Yves Duclos & Flaviana Palmisano, 2019. "Intertemporal pro-poorness," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 52(1), pages 65-96, January.
    4. Dirk Van de gaer & Flaviana Palmisano, 2018. "Growth, Mobility and Social Welfare," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 988, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    5. Stephan Klasen & Maria C. Lo Bue & Vincenzo Prete, 2020. "What's behind pro-poor growth?: The role of shocks and measurement error," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2020-16, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    6. Flaviana Palmisano & Dirk Van de gaer, 2016. "History-dependent growth incidence: a characterization and an application to the economic crisis in Italy," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 68(2), pages 585-603.
    7. Duval Hernández, Robert & Fields, Gary S. & Jakubson, George H., 2020. "Inequality and Panel Income Changes: Conditions for Possibilities and Impossibilities," IZA Discussion Papers 13179, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Stephen P. Jenkins & Philippe Van Kerm, 2016. "Assessing Individual Income Growth," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 83(332), pages 679-703, October.
    9. Fourrier-Nicolaï Edwin & Lubrano Michel, 2024. "Bayesian inference for non-anonymous growth incidence curves using Bernstein polynomials: an application to academic wage dynamics," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 28(2), pages 319-336, April.
    10. Leonardo Gasparini & Jessica Bracco, 2023. "Tres décadas en diez gráficos: el desarrollo inclusivo en América Latina a la luz de las encuestas de hogares," Revista Desarrollo y Sociedad, Universidad de los Andes,Facultad de Economía, CEDE, vol. 94(2), pages 37-67, June.
    11. Michael Savage, 2016. "Poorest Made Poorer? Decomposing income losses at the bottom of the income distribution during the Great Recession," Papers WP528, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
    12. Higgins, Sean & Lustig, Nora, 2016. "Can a poverty-reducing and progressive tax and transfer system hurt the poor?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 63-75.
    13. Vito Peragine & Flaviana Palmisano & Paolo Brunori, 2014. "Economic Growth and Equality of Opportunity," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 28(2), pages 247-281.
    14. Walter Bossert & Bhaskar Dutta, 2019. "The measurement of welfare change," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 53(4), pages 603-619, December.
    15. Edwin Fourrier-Nicolai & Michel Lubrano, 2019. "The Effect of Aspirations on Inequality: Evidence from the German Reunification using Bayesian Growth Incidence Curves," Working Papers halshs-02122371, HAL.
    16. Elena Bárcena & Olga Cantó, 2018. "A simple subgroup decomposable measure of downward (and upward) income mobility," Working Papers 472, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    17. Creedy, John & Gemmell, Norman, 2017. "Illustrating Income Mobility: Two New Measures," Working Paper Series 6693, Victoria University of Wellington, Chair in Public Finance.
    18. Flaviana Palmisano & Vito Peragine, 2015. "The Distributional Incidence of Growth: A Social Welfare Approach," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 61(3), pages 440-464, September.
    19. Edwin Fourrier-Nicolaï & Michel Lubrano, 2021. "Bayesian Inference for Parametric Growth Incidence Curves," Research on Economic Inequality, in: Research on Economic Inequality: Poverty, Inequality and Shocks, volume 29, pages 31-55, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    20. Markus Jäntti & Stephen P. Jenkins, 2013. "Income Mobility," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 607, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Growth; Mobility; Inequality; Social welfare;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D3 - Microeconomics - - Distribution
    • H0 - Public Economics - - General
    • J6 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers

    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:hal:pseptp:halshs-04330985. 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: Caroline Bauer (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.