Measuring Inclusive Growth in Nigeria: An Application of the Social Opportunity Function

Abstract

Inclusive growth, pro-poor growth and broad-based growth are all terms used to explain growth processes that enables the entire population including the poor to actively participate and benefit from the growth process. In the last two decades Nigeria’s GDP has averaged at about 7%, indicating a fast-growing economy. Despite having a high GDP growth rate, it has not translated to improved standard of living for majority of the people, rather the level of poverty is on the increase. Income inequality has also widened in the country. This clearly shows that increase in GDP alone is not a sufficient condition for reduction in poverty and inequality. In order to avoid the problem of unwanted labour reserves with high growth rate, it is important to make growth inclusive. This study utilised the opportunity index to analyse the growth and equity dimension of inclusive growth across the entire population distribution. Cross sectional data obtained from the General Household Survey (GHS) 2015, by the National Bureau of Statistics was used. This study revealed that inclusive growth was not achieved in the area of employment, provisions of health care in the private and rural health institutions, secondary and tertiary education.

Research on differences and influencing factors of inclusive green development in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region

“…Afterwards, the connotation of inclusive green development has gone from "creating green industries and sustainable urban life to reduce poverty [14] (Spratt 2013)", to "emphasizing social equality and environmental sustainability to improve welfare [15] (Bouma et al 2015)", and finally focusing on the "narrowing of the gap between the rich and the poor and the sharing of development opportunities and achievements [16] (Dhingra 2015), concentrating on the role and status of people [17] (Zhang 2014)". Now, inclusive green development is considered to be the inevitable result of the coordinated development of economy, society and environment, emphasizing the high quality of economic development, the fair sharing of social opportunities and achievements, and the maintenance and sustainability of ecology [18] (Zhou 2020); In terms of measurement models and index selection, there are not only models such as social welfare function [19] (Ali et al 2007), opportunity function [20] (Jacques et al 2010), and the IDI (Inclusive Development Index) proposed by the World Economic Forum [21] (2017), but also the measurement index system constructed by scholars from different perspectives according to the connotation and characteristics. The evaluation system involves economic sustainability [22] (Fan et al 2022), industrial structure and scale [23] (Gu et al 2021), social opportunity equity [24] (Zhou et al 2018), ecological protection [25] (Sheng 2017), development achievement sharing [26] (Xu et al 2017), technological progress [27] (Duan 2020) and policy support [28] (Almas et al 2019).…”