Was Pro-Poor Economic Growth in Australia for the Income-Poor? And for the Multidimensionally-Poor?

Abstract

We investigate the pro-poorness of Australia's strong economic growth in the …rst decade of the XXI century using anonymous and non-anonymous approaches to the measurement of pro-poor growth. The sensitivity of pro-poor growth evaluations to the de…nition of poverty is evaluated by comparing the results for the standard income-poverty measure with those based on a multidimensional de…nition of poverty. We …nd that Australian growth in this period can be only categorized as pro-poor according to the weakest concept of pro-poorness that does not require any bias of growth towards the poor. In addition, our results indicate that growth was clearly more pro-income poor than pro-multidimensionally poor. Counterfactual distribution analysis reveals that di¤erences in the distribution of health between these two groups is the non-income factor that most contributes to explain this result. Financial support from the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (grant ECO2008-03484-C02-01/ECON and ECO2010-21668-C03-03) Xunta de Galicia (10SEC300023PR) is gratefully acknowledged. y This paper uses unit record data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey. The HILDA Project was initiated and is funded by the Australian Government Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous A¤airs (FaHCSIA) and is managed by the

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