The jury is still out on whether pro-poor growth is enough to reduce poverty. However, the OECD’s specialised network, POVNET, believes growth and poverty reduction should work together.
Economics is notorious for its divergent schools of thought, academic in-fights, stubborn fads and fanciful fashions. Development economics is no exception. Take the battle lines drawn between the protagonists of economic growth on the one hand and explicit poverty reduction on the other. In the last decade, the former group insisted that growth in itself would eventually lead to rising incomes, including among the poor. Not so, said the latter side, and emphasised the pattern of growth instead. For Harvard economist Dani Rodrik, writing in 2000, the discussion raging in workshops and research papers was little more than a “hollow debate” which distracted attention from serious questions about what actually works in development and how.
Mr Rodrik’s remarks reflected the mood of other researchers as they reopened the discussion on the pattern of growth and its impact on income. If one school of thought was found to be right, then the debate would be over. But poverty is still rampant, and the evidence on which policy emphasis works is mixed. Even much cited World Bank research, such as that by Craig Burnside and David Dollar on aid, growth and development, came under renewed scrutiny. Little wonder development authorities have become anxious. So has the tax-paying public: enough of the debate, they say, tell us what must be done for aid to work and poverty to fall!
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