Spatial Dynamics and the Persistence of Inequality in Thailand Project.

Is there a tradeoff between raising growth and reducing inequality and poverty? This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the complex links between growth, inequality, and poverty, with causation going in both directions. The evidence suggests that growth can be effective in reducing poverty, but its impact on inequality is ambiguous and depends on the underlying sources of growth. The impact of poverty and inequality on growth is likewise ambiguous, as several channels mediate the relationship. But most plausible mechanisms suggest that poverty and inequality reduce growth, at least in the long run. Policies play a role in shaping these relationships and those designed to improve equality of opportunity can simultaneously improve inclusiveness and growth.

Based on two nationwide Socio-economic Surveys conducted in 1975- 1976 and in 1981. Describes different methods of measuring income inequality and poverty.

This paper shows that growth and income distribution dynamics are closely linked through occupation, financial intermediation, and education. We use the micro data from Thailand for 1976-1996. The compositional changes across these characteristics account for half of the Thai inequality increase and forty percent of the Thai growth and poverty reduction. Financial deepening and educational expansion contributed to increasing inequality while occupational transformation contributed to poverty alleviation. The changes in income gaps across the income-status groups, that is, divergence and then convergence, give rise to inverted-U inequality dynamics. These two growth-related components of inequality dynamics, composition and income-gap dynamics, explain virtually all the change in overall inequality, except its initial rise. Thus, inequality dynamics can be viewed as integral part of wider process of growth as Kuznets speculated.