A note on poverty, growth, and inequality nexus: evidence from a panel of sub-Saharan African countries

This study investigates the relationship between growth, inequality and poverty in a panel of 42 sub-Saharan African countries by using the latest 13 household surveys, during the period of 1981–2012. The study proposed a relatively new concept of pro-poor growth, which includes both the linear and non-linear growth components in a cross-sectional time series data, called ‘Pro-equality Growth Index (PeGI)’. The results confirm the ‘negative-linear’, ‘inverted U-shaped’, and ‘negative asymptotic U-shaped’ relationship between mean survey income and inequality in different model specifications. PeGI confirms the pro-equality growth process during 1984–1987 and 1996–1999 while remaining growth phases confirm the ‘anti-equality’ growth.