Title: Analysing poverty-growth-inequality linkage in lower and lower-middle income countries in Africa

Authors: Richardson Kojo Edeme; Evelyn Nwamaka Ogbeide-Osaretin; Chigozie Nelson Nkalu

Addresses: Department of Economics, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, 4100002, Nigeria; Institute of Business Research, University of Economics, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam ' Department of Economics, Samuel Adegboyega University, Ogwa, Edo State, Nigeria ' Department of Economics, Aberdeen Business School, University of Aberdeen, Scotland, UK; Department of Economics, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria

Abstract: This research's primary purpose was to examine the poverty-growth-inequality linkage to ascertain the existence and direction of causality using data from lower and lower-middle-income countries in Africa. The result shows that while inequality is positively related to poverty, the effect of growth is negative. The short-run analysis also shows that growth had an insignificant negative relationship with poverty, while inequality had a significant positive relationship. The result also shows a long-run causality in growth and inequality given the significance of the error term while there is no long-run causality in poverty. The result shows that while growth is widening inequality, the inequality gaps created also help increase growth. The findings imply that policies towards reducing inequality in lower and lower-income countries are imperative for poverty reduction.

Keywords: poverty; inequality; lower-income countries; lower-middle-income countries; growth.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSD.2021.115232

International Journal of Sustainable Development, 2021 Vol.24 No.1, pp.50 - 59

Received: 03 Apr 2020
Accepted: 10 Dec 2020

Published online: 24 May 2021 *

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