The impact of government policies on income inequality and the translation of growth into income poverty reduction: protocol for two systematic reviews

Abstract

The eradication of poverty has been a central aim of international development for several decades, and the importance of reducing inequality is also increasingly accepted. This paper presents the protocols for two systematic reviews on the government policies and interventions that affect in-country income inequality and the translation of economic growth into reductions in income poverty. The paper describes the background to the reviews and the links between them, their aims and scope, the inclusion criteria, search strategy and synthesis options.

Keywords:

• systematic review
• income inequality
• income poverty
• government policy
• protocol
• meta-analysis

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for excellent research assistance from Ines Afonso Roque Ferreira, Anthony Amoah and Victoria Zevallos Porles in carrying out the initial mapping exercise. They are also grateful to comments from members of an External Advisory Board and to Hugh Waddington for detailed comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Notes

1. The extent to which growth is translated into poverty reduction is determined partly by the initial distribution of income and partly by the way in which the distribution of income changes alongside economic growth (Ravallion 2001; Bourguignon 2003). From a policy perspective, the initial distribution of income is something of a given; so, in the short to medium-term, the main way in which government policies affect the translation of growth into poverty reduction is by affecting the way in which the distribution of income changes alongside economic growth and the extent to which these changes by themselves reduce poverty.

2. Note that the precise titles of the systematic reviews refer only to the association between government policies and either income inequality or the translation of growth into poverty reduction. Strictly speaking, this could be explained by effects in either direction. Nevertheless, we do aim to determine whether and to what extent the evidence is indicative of the causal impact of government policies on income inequality and the translation of growth into poverty reduction, as opposed to the mere association.

3. Note that many ex post empirical studies include countries from all income groups (low, middle and high) in the analysis; we include such studies, on the grounds that they typically contain a significant proportion of low- and/or middle-income countries.

4. A full list of the electronic databases and other relevant websites that will be searched for relevant studies is shown in Appendix 1.

5. Note also that for the income poverty review, we do not include in the search concepts the more precise terms ‘economic growth’ and ‘income poverty’. The reason is that our initial searches revealed many relevant studies, which do not – at least in the abstract and keywords – explicitly mention economic growth or income poverty, they refer only to ‘growth’ and ‘poverty’. Our broader search terms ensure that we do capture such studies in our search. The drawback is that we capture a large number of irrelevant studies. To offset this problem, we utilise the Boolean operator ‘AND NOT’ to exclude automatically literature using terms not relevant to our review, such as green growth, child growth and health poverty.

6. This does not deny that synthesis of even a small number of studies on a particular policy intervention can provide useful information, even if MRA is not possible. The priority, however, was considered to lie in the policy areas where there is most evidence; the synthesis of the more limited evidence for other policy areas was instead left as a potential area for follow-up work.

7. Our initial mapping exercise showed that the majority of studies do focus on inequality or poverty at the national level, but some look only at inequality at the level of regions within a country (for example, states or provinces), in urban or rural areas, or sometimes at a very localised level (for example, the village).

Additional information

Funding

The systematic reviews referred to in this paper have been funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID); the full titles are ‘What policies and interventions have been strongly associated with changes in in-country income inequality’ and ‘What policies and interventions have been strongly associated with the translation of growth into reductions in income poverty’. The complete protocol for each review is available at: http://r4d.dfid.gov.uk.