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Poverty in Thailand

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ERD WORKING PAPER SERIES NO. 8
ECONOMICS AND RESEARCHDEPARTMENT

Anil B. Deolalikar

April 2002

Asian Development Bank

ERD Working Paper No. 8

POVERTY, GROWTH, AND INEQUALITY IN THAILAND

Anil B. Deolalikar

April 2002

Anil Deolalikar is Professor of Economics and of International Studies at the University of Washington. This paper stems from RETA 5923: Pro-poor Growth and Institutional Constraints to Poverty Reduction in DMCs. The views expressed in the paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the view or policies of the Asian Development Bank.

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ERD Working Paper No. 8 POVERTY, GROWTH, AND INEQUALITY

IN

THAILAND

Asian Development Bank P.O. Box 789 0980 Manila Philippines 2002 by …show more content…

These differences are likely to introduce significant (systematic) measurement error in the estimation of povertygrowth elasticities. Second, the cross-country studies ignore the fact that the growth-poverty relationship is likely to be highly country-specific; the “average” elasticity estimated by the various studies is unlikely to capture the wide range of country experiences. In some countries, economic growth has been associated with rapid poverty reduction, while in others it has not. Even in a given country, growth can be sharply poverty-reducing at one point in time and can have a much smaller effect on poverty reduction during another time period. To some extent, these problems can be mitigated by the use of intracountry data—data on regions, provinces, or districts within a country. Since data on different regions within a country typically are derived from the same statistical survey or administrative data collection system, there is much greater comparability of data across observation units. In addition, subnational entities, such as provinces, often share the same political and policy framework, and are socially and culturally more similar to each other than individual countries are to each other. The estimation of an average poverty-growth elasticity for a country, although not

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