Are Pro-Growth Policies Pro-Poor? Evidence from Bangladesh by Shahidur Khandker and Gayatri Koolwal :: NEUDC 2007 Papers :: Northeast Universities Development Consortium Conference :: Center for International Development at Harvard University (CID)

The characterization of pro-poor growth, including the sources through which the poor benefit from public interventions, remains a topic of debate in the current development literature. This paper examines the impact of a range of policies across villages in rural Bangladesh (spanning credit and infrastructure expansion, as well as agricultural output pricing) not only on different sources of income growth, but also on per capita expenditure and poverty to determine the veins through which households have benefited from such policies. Higher agricultural output prices and village electrification lead to substantial income gains, primarily through farm income, as well as poverty reduction across the distribution of households. In contrast, commercial bank expansion promotes farm and non-farm income growth, but does not lead to substantial poverty reduction. Policies that have limited distributional impact on household income have also led to substantial poverty reduction, such as microcredit (which enhances non-farm income for only low-income households) and paved road access (which enhances total income and farm income only for households at the highest end of the distribution). 1 The authors would like to thank Martin Ravallion, seminar participants at the Asian Development Bank, as well as conference participants at the GPED Conference in Vanderbilt University. Views expressed in the paper are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of the World Bank.