scispace - formally typeset
Journal ArticleDOI

Inequality and Growth in a Panel of Countries

Robert J. Barro
- 01 Mar 2000 - 
- Vol. 5, Iss: 1, pp 5-32
Reads0
Chats0
TLDR
In this paper, a broad panel of countries showed little overall relation between income inequality and rates of growth and investment, while the Kuznets curve is a clear empirical regularity, but it does not explain the bulk of variations in inequality across countries or over time.
Abstract
Evidence from a broad panel of countries shows little overall relation between income inequality and rates of growth and investment. For growth, higher inequality tends to retard growth in poor countries and encourage growth in richer places. The Kuznets curve—whereby inequality first increases and later decreases during the process of economic development—emerges as a clear empirical regularity. However, this relation does not explain the bulk of variations in inequality across countries or over time.

read more

Content maybe subject to copyright    Report

Citations
More filters

Economic growth and income inequality

TL;DR: This article investigated whether income inequality affects subsequent growth in a cross-country sample for 1965-90, using the models of Barro (1997), Bleaney and Nishiyama (2002) and Sachs and Warner (1997) with negative results.
Posted Content

Growth is Good for the Poor

TL;DR: Dollar and Kraay as mentioned in this paper found that the share of income accruing to the bottom quintile does not vary systematically with the average income, and that when average incomes rise, the average incomes of the poorest fifth of society rise proportionately.
Journal ArticleDOI

Religion and Economic Growth across Countries

TL;DR: The authors used international survey data on religiosity for a broad panel of countries to investigate the effects of church attendance and religious beliefs on economic growth and found that economic growth responds positively to religious beliefs, notably beliefs in hell and heaven, but negatively to church attendance.
Posted Content

Growth, Inequality, and Poverty: Looking Beyond Averages

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the poor in developing countries do typically share in the gains from rising aggregate affluence and in the losses from aggregate contraction, while the other side has focused on the diverse welfare impacts found beneath the averages.
References
More filters
ReportDOI

Economic Growth in a Cross Section of Countries

TL;DR: For 98 countries in the period 1960-1985, the growth rate of real per capita GDP is positively related to initial human capital (proxied by 1960 school-enrollment rates) and negatively related to the initial (1960) level as mentioned in this paper.
Book ChapterDOI

Economic Growth and Income Inequality

TL;DR: The process of industrialization engenders increasing income inequality as the labor force shifts from low-income agriculture to the high income sectors as mentioned in this paper, and on more advanced levels of development inequality starts decreasing and industrialized countries are again characterized by low inequality due to the smaller weight of agriculture in production and income generation.
Journal ArticleDOI

Corruption and Growth

TL;DR: In this paper, a newly assembled data set consisting of subjective indices of corruption, the amount of red tape, the efficiency of the judicial system, and various categories of political stability for a cross section of countries is analyzed.
Journal ArticleDOI

Income Distribution and Macroeconomics

TL;DR: The authors analyzes the role of wealth distribution in macroeconomics through investment in human capital and shows that the initial distribution of wealth affects aggregate output and investment both in the short and in the long run, as there are multiple steady states.
Journal ArticleDOI

Distributive Politics and Economic Growth

TL;DR: This paper analyzed the relationship between economics and politics and concluded that inequality is conducive to the adoption of growth-retarding policies, and presented cross-country evidence consistent with it. But their analysis focused on how an economy's initial configuration of resources shapes the political struggle for income and wealth distribution, and how that, in turn, affects long run growth.