A New Growth Approach to Poverty Alleviation

نویسنده

  • Philippe Aghion
چکیده

Growth theory has often been perceived by development economists as being orthogonal to their main concern, namely, that of understanding the sources of persistent poverty and stagnation in households and villages, and of designing policies aimed at overcoming them. Growth theory, they would argue, is a subdiscipline of macroeconomics: it features economies with representative producers and consumers; and it focuses on aggregate savings and the role of physical or human capital accumulation in long-run growth and convergence. In particular, growth theory is not so concerned with poverty and inequality between rich and poor individuals within a country. Empirical growth studies have been equally perceived as being too aggregate: most often carried out at a cross-country level, they involve aggregate variables such as average per capita gross domestic product (GDP), average total factor productivity (TFP), average savings rate, average measures of …nancial development, or average education indicators. In contrast, by focusing directly on households and local institutions and infrastructure, and by using highly targeted control experiments to evaluate the e¤ectiveness of such institutions in a particular community or village, development economists feel entitled to believe that they have found the right approach to deal with the issue of poverty alleviation, and of how to close the gap between rich and poor. This paper is an attempt to break the divide between growth and development economics. Using the example of India over the past decades, we argue that innovation and/or productivity growth have been main engines of poverty reduction in that country. We also argue that new growth theories can shed light on this process. Moreover, these can also explain why growth and poverty reduction has not occurred in Latin America. The reminder of this essay is organized as follows. In Section 2 we summarize what is currently known about the recent evolution of growth and poverty indicators in India over the past four decades. In Section 3, we provide a very brief presentation of new growth theory and of some of its main predictions. In Section 4 we use our description of new growth theory to analyze the reform process in India. In Section 5, we show

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

منابع مشابه

Examine poverty alleviation policies in Iran based on overwhelming documents

The main purpose of the present study is to identify effective strategies to reduce poverty based on extracurricular documents with regional foresight approach. The method of this study is descriptive and qualitative in terms of research propositions. It has been done in two stages of library and Delphi method and with reference to 37 academics and executives in economics and management. In the...

متن کامل

The Evaluation of Qard-al-Hasan as a Microfinance Approach in Poverty Alleviation Programs

Different countries have implemented various methods in their poverty elimination programs. Redistribution policies, financing low income groups, subsidizing, enhancing the capabilities of the poor, and… are among the traditional policies for poverty elimination programs. The study of concept of poverty is always one of the most important considerations in Islamic thoughts. Islamic Shariat wit...

متن کامل

Challenges and Scope for an Employment-intensive Growth Strategy

The main objective of this chapter is to explore new approaches to policy for poverty reduction, given the major trends in the international and regional economies, particularly globalization, the need to generate new growth, and the shift from state-sponsored to market-oriented development strategies. The literature abounds with poverty studies that contain concepts, measurements, determinants...

متن کامل

The Impact of Vocational Training on Poverty Alleviation through Moderation Role of Foreign Funds; Evidence from Southern Punjab

Vocational Training is one of the crucial elements for generation that is going to be a part of skilled workforce of this world of work and to reduce the level of poverty.  It quickly enables a person to be a part of competitive workforce by enhancing their skills so that he may cope with the rapidly changing technological job and environment. The core objective of this study is to examine the ...

متن کامل

A SWOT analysis of poverty alleviation and mountain development in China: A case study of Xiangxi prefecture

Chinese government is updating its Aid-the-Poor Program to develop a sound national poverty alleviation system, especially in mountain areas. And promoting economic growth and improving quality of life of residents are important components to ensure that poverty alleviation goals meet throughout the poverty alleviation chain. In this paper, Xiang-xi Prefecture, a typical mountain region, was ta...

متن کامل

ذخیره در منابع من


  با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

عنوان ژورنال:

دوره   شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2004