published in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Economics and Finance. Oxford. OUP. 2020.
"Shared prosperity" has become a common phrase in the development policy discourse. This short paper provides its most widely used operational definition – the growth rate in the average income of the poorest 40 percent of a country's population – and describes its origins. The paper discusses how this notion relates to well-established concepts and social indicators, including social welfare, poverty, inequality, and mobility, and reviews some of its design shortcomings. The paper then looks at household survey data to assess recent progress in this indicator globally. The analysis finds that during 2008–13, mean incomes for the poorest 40 percent rose in 60 of 83 countries. In 49 of them, accounting for 65 percent of the sampled population, it rose faster than overall average incomes. Finally, the paper briefly reviews a (non-exhaustive) range of 'pre-distribution' and 'redistribution' policies with a sound empirical track record of raising productivity and well-being among the poor, thus contributing to shared prosperity.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.