IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/5464.html

Accounting for heterogeneity in growth incidence in Cameroon

Author

Listed:
  • Bassol3, Leandre
  • Essama-Nssah, B.
  • Paul,Saumik

Abstract

This paper presents counterfactual decompositions based on both the Shapley method and a generalization of the Oaxaca-Blinder approach to identify proximate factors that might explain differences in the distribution of economic welfare in Cameroon in 1996-2007. In particular, the analysis uses re-centered influence function regressions to link the growth incidence curve for 2001-2007 to household characteristics and account for heterogeneity of impact across quantiles in terms of the composition (or endowment) effect and structural (or price) effect. The analysis finds that the level of the growth incidence curve is explained by the endowment effect while its shape is driven by the price effect. Observed gains at the bottom of the distribution are due to returns to endowments. The rest of the gains are accounted for by the composition effect. Further decomposition of these effects shows that the composition effect is determined mainly by household dem ographics while the structural effect is shaped by the sector of employment and geography. Finally, analysis of the rural-urban gap in living standards shows that, for the poorest households in both sectors, differences in household characteristics matter more than the returns to those characteristics. The opposite is true for better-off households.

Suggested Citation

  • Bassol3, Leandre & Essama-Nssah, B. & Paul,Saumik, 2010. "Accounting for heterogeneity in growth incidence in Cameroon," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5464, The World Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:5464
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/444491468227698273/pdf/WPS5464.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. DiNardo, John & Fortin, Nicole M & Lemieux, Thomas, 1996. "Labor Market Institutions and the Distribution of Wages, 1973-1992: A Semiparametric Approach," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(5), pages 1001-1044, September.
    2. Jacques Silber & Michal Weber, 1999. "Labour market discrimination: are there significant differences between the various decomposition procedures?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(3), pages 359-365.
    3. François Bourguignon & Francisco Ferreira & Phillippe Leite, 2008. "Beyond Oaxaca–Blinder: Accounting for differences in household income distributions," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 6(2), pages 117-148, June.
    4. Marianne P. Bitler & Jonah B. Gelbach & Hilary W. Hoynes, 2006. "What Mean Impacts Miss: Distributional Effects of Welfare Reform Experiments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(4), pages 988-1012, September.
    5. Mathia Sinning & Markus Hahn & Thomas K. Bauer, 2008. "The Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition for nonlinear regression models," Stata Journal, StataCorp LLC, vol. 8(4), pages 480-492, December.
    6. Pedro Carneiro & Karsten T. Hansen & James J. Heckman, 2002. "Removing the Veil of Ignorance in Assessing the Distributional Impacts of Social Policies," NBER Working Papers 8840, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Emini, Christian Arnault & Cockburn, John & Decaluwe, Bernard, 2005. "The poverty impacts of the Doha Round in Cameroon : the role of tax policy," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3746, The World Bank.
    8. Stanislav Kolenikov & Anthony Shorrocks, 2005. "A Decomposition Analysis of Regional Poverty in Russia," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(1), pages 25-46, February.
    9. repec:bla:revinw:v:43:y:1997:i:2:p:239-52 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Ravallion, Martin, 2001. "Growth, Inequality and Poverty: Looking Beyond Averages," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 29(11), pages 1803-1815, November.
    11. Fortin, Nicole & Lemieux, Thomas & Firpo, Sergio, 2011. "Decomposition Methods in Economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 1, pages 1-102, Elsevier.
    12. Ben Jann, 2008. "The Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition for linear regression models," Stata Journal, StataCorp LLC, vol. 8(4), pages 453-479, December.
    13. Manski, Charles F, 1991. "Regression," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 29(1), pages 34-50, March.
    14. Arsene Gideon Nkama, 2006. "Analysing the Poverty Impact of the HIPC Initiative in Cameroon," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 18(3), pages 330-352.
    15. Ravallion, Martin, 2004. "Pro-poor growth : A primer," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3242, The World Bank.
    16. Pushkar Maitra & Farshid Vahid, 2006. "The effect of household characteristics on living standards in South Africa 1993–1998: a quantile regression analysis with sample attrition," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(7), pages 999-1018, November.
    17. Sergio Firpo & Nicole M. Fortin & Thomas Lemieux, 2009. "Unconditional Quantile Regressions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(3), pages 953-973, May.
    18. Ferreira, Francisco H.G. & Leite, Phillippe G. & Ravallion, Martin, 2010. "Poverty reduction without economic growth?: Explaining Brazil's poverty dynamics, 1985-2004," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 20-36, September.
    19. Ravallion, Martin & Chen, Shaohua, 2003. "Measuring pro-poor growth," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 78(1), pages 93-99, January.
    20. Patrick Kline, 2011. "Oaxaca-Blinder as a Reweighting Estimator," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(3), pages 532-537, May.
    21. Melly, Blaise, 2005. "Decomposition of differences in distribution using quantile regression," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 577-590, August.
    22. Essama-Nssah, B., 2005. "A unified framework for pro-poor growth analysis," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 89(2), pages 216-221, November.
    23. Benjamin, Dwayne & Brandt, Loren & Giles, John, 2005. "The Evolution of Income Inequality in Rural China," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 53(4), pages 769-824, July.
    24. Coulombe, Harold & Mckay, Andrew, 1996. "Modeling determinants of poverty in Mauritania," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 24(6), pages 1015-1031, June.
    25. Essama-Nssah, B. & Bassole, Leandre, 2010. "A counterfactual analysis of the poverty impact of economic growth in Cameroon," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5249, The World Bank.
    26. Ferreira , Francisco H. G., 2010. "Distributions in motion: economic growth, inequality, and poverty dynamics," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5424, The World Bank.
    27. Simon Appleton, 1995. ""The rich are just like us, only richer." Poverty functions or consumption functions? Evidence from Uganda," CSAE Working Paper Series 1995-04, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    28. Thomas Bauer & Mathias Sinning, 2008. "An extension of the Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition to nonlinear models," AStA Advances in Statistical Analysis, Springer;German Statistical Society, vol. 92(2), pages 197-206, May.
    29. Nguyen, Binh T. & Albrecht, James W. & Vroman, Susan B. & Westbrook, M. Daniel, 2007. "A quantile regression decomposition of urban-rural inequality in Vietnam," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(2), pages 466-490, July.
    30. Francis Menjo Baye, 2006. "Growth, Redistribution and Poverty Changes in Cameroon: A Shapley Decomposition Analysis," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 15(4), pages 543-570, December.
    31. Firpo, Sergio & Fortin, Nicole M. & Lemieux, Thomas, 2011. "Occupational Tasks and Changes in the Wage Structure," IZA Discussion Papers 5542, IZA Network @ LISER.
    32. Jenkins, Stephen P & Lambert, Peter J, 1997. "Three 'I's of Poverty Curves, with an Analysis of UK Poverty Trends," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 49(3), pages 317-327, July.
    33. B. Essama‐Nssah & Peter J. Lambert, 2009. "Measuring Pro‐Poorness: A Unifying Approach With New Results," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 55(3), pages 752-778, September.
    34. Blaise Melly, 2005. "Public-private sector wage differentials in Germany: Evidence from quantile regression," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 30(2), pages 505-520, September.
    35. Ravallion, M. & Datt, G., 1991. "Growth and Redistribution Components of Changes in Poverty Measures," Papers 83, World Bank - Living Standards Measurement.
    36. Datt, Gaurav & Ravallion, Martin, 1992. "Growth and redistribution components of changes in poverty measures : A decomposition with applications to Brazil and India in the 1980s," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 275-295, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Newman, John L. & Azevedo, Joao Pedro, 2013. "Setting reasonable performance targets for public service delivery," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6385, The World Bank.
    2. Essama-Nssah, B., 2012. "Identification of sources of variation in poverty outcomes," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5954, The World Bank.

    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. Essama-Nssah, B. & Bassole, Leandre, 2010. "A counterfactual analysis of the poverty impact of economic growth in Cameroon," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5249, The World Bank.
    2. Essama-Nssah, B., 2012. "Identification of sources of variation in poverty outcomes," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5954, The World Bank.
    3. B. Essama-Nssah & Saumik Paul & Léandre Bassolé, 2013. "Accounting for Heterogeneity in Growth Incidence in Cameroon Using Recentered Influence Function Regression," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 22(5), pages 757-795, November.
    4. Facundo Alvaredo & Leonardo Gasparini, 2013. "Recent Trends in Inequality and Poverty in Developing Countries," CEDLAS, Working Papers 0151, CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
    5. Fortin, Nicole & Lemieux, Thomas & Firpo, Sergio, 2011. "Decomposition Methods in Economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 1, pages 1-102, Elsevier.
    6. Sergio P. Firpo & Nicole M. Fortin & Thomas Lemieux, 2018. "Decomposing Wage Distributions Using Recentered Influence Function Regressions," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-40, May.
    7. Azevedo, Joao Pedro & Sanfelice, Viviane & Nguyen, Minh C., 2012. "Shapley Decomposition by Components of a Welfare Aggregate," MPRA Paper 85584, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Mansour, Wael, 2012. "The patterns and determinants of household welfare growth in Jordan : 2002-2010," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6249, The World Bank.
    9. Sloczynski, Tymon, 2013. "Population Average Gender Effects," IZA Discussion Papers 7315, IZA Network @ LISER.
    10. Ferreira , Francisco H. G., 2010. "Distributions in motion: economic growth, inequality, and poverty dynamics," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5424, The World Bank.
    11. Sonja C. Kassenboehmer & Mathias G. Sinning, 2014. "Distributional Changes in the Gender Wage Gap," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 67(2), pages 335-361, April.
    12. 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.
    13. Hassine, Nadia Belhaj, 2015. "Economic Inequality in the Arab Region," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 532-556.
    14. Prathi Seneviratne, 2017. "Explaining Changes in Sri Lanka’s Wage Distribution, 1992-2014: A Quantile Regression Analysis," Working Papers 2017-01, Carleton College, Department of Economics.
    15. YOKOYAMA, Izumi & 横山, 泉, 2015. "The Impact of Tax Reform in Japan on the Work-Hour and Income Distributions of Married Women," Discussion Papers 2015-02, Graduate School of Economics, Hitotsubashi University.
    16. Girma Gezimu Gebre & Hiroshi Isoda & Dil Bahadur Rahut & Yuichiro Amekawa & Hisako Nomura, 2021. "Gender Gaps in Market Participation Among Individual and Joint Decision-Making Farm Households: Evidence from Southern Ethiopia," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 33(3), pages 649-683, June.
    17. Orlando Sotomayor, 2019. "Growth with reduction in poverty and inequality: did Brazil show the way?," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 17(4), pages 521-541, December.
    18. Sloczynski, Tymon, 2015. "Average Wage Gaps and Oaxaca–Blinder Decompositions," IZA Discussion Papers 9036, IZA Network @ LISER.
    19. Sami Bibi, 2006. "Growth with Equity is Better for the Poor," Cahiers de recherche 0640, CIRPEE.
    20. Ghosh, Pallab Kumar, 2014. "The contribution of human capital variables to changes in the wage distribution function," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 58-69.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:wbk:wbrwps:5464. 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: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.html .

    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.