Skip to content
Research Article Open access CC BY 4.0

Growth and Income Convergence: Do Worldwide Economic Groups Make Any Difference?

Mustapha Djennas

Journal of Economics, Management and Trade · pp. 215–229 · Published 9 Jan 2015

10.9734/BJEMT/2015/15584

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to study the income convergence process according to economic growth in the world. In addition of the income countries analysis, the paper introduce a deeper analytical framework involving groups of countries in the word. The study concerns 135 countries using data covering the period from 1980 to 2013. The methodological framework develop a cross-country analysis in the world, which integrate a decomposition approach for unconditional β-convergence, σ-convergence and conditional β-convergence of economic growth and income dynamics. Furthermore, based on the generalized Gini coefficient, the decomposition framework split the change in income inequality into progressivity/pro-poor growth and re-ranking components. The results are consistent with earlier studies that have examined inequality across countries. The main findings underline - even if cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis of the income distribution provide different complementary pictures over time - that except for few countries, all the results show a very weak evidence of β-convergence, σ-convergence and conditional β-convergence in the world, and that there is still a lot of work to do in order to reach some accepted levels of convergence as far as the income disparities and economic growth are concerned. Furthermore, even in the case of groups of countries with common economic interests, the convergence process is even more complicated and very hard to achieve in the majority of cases if a relative homogeneity could not be ensured about the growth’s key indicators.  

Growth income convergence inequality redistribution progressivity

References (19)

  1. 1 A Contribution to the Empirics of Economic Growth [DOI]
  2. 2 Galton's Fallacy and Tests of the Convergence Hypothesis [DOI]
  3. 3 The Classical Approach to Convergence Analysis [DOI]
  4. 4 The World Distribution of Income: Falling Poverty and ... Convergence, Period [DOI]
  5. 5 Do Old Fallacies Ever Die
  6. 6 A single-parameter generalization of the Gini indices of inequality [DOI]
  7. 7 On an Extension of the Gini Inequality Index [DOI]
  8. 8 The Distribution and Redistribution of Income: A Mathematical Analysis
  9. 9 Spatial Inequality and Development [DOI]
  10. 10 Ethically flexible gini indices for income distributions in the continuum [DOI]
  11. 11 Regional inequalities and convergence clubs in the European Union new member-states
  12. 12 MOBILITY, INEQUALITY, AND HORIZONTAL EQUITY [DOI]
  13. 13 Evidence on the Convergence of Per Capita Income: A Comparison of Founder Members of the A ssociation of S outh E ast A sian N ations and the S outh A sian A ssociation of R egional C ooperation [DOI]
  14. 14 Practical Tools for Monitoring Convergence and Development focusing on Integration Areas
  15. 15 Efficient equilibrium convergence: Heterogeneity and growth [DOI]
  16. 16 A SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS OF CROSS-COUNTRY GROWTH REGRESSIONS
  17. 17 Trends in Income Inequality, Pro-Poor Income Growth and Income Mobility [DOI]
  18. 18 A New Approach for Analysing Income Convergence Across Countries [DOI]
  19. 19 GROWTH CONVERGENCE IN SOUTH AMERICA [DOI]

Cited by 0

No indexed citations yet.

Related research

Article metrics

Real usage data collected on this platform.

53

Page views

0

PDF downloads

17

Outbound clicks

0

Citations

Views over time

Views by country

Approximate, from request IP at view time — not citizenship or institution. Countries with fewer than 5 views are grouped as "Other".

Traffic sources

Referring site, by host.

Views and downloads exclude known bots/crawlers. Citations combines this platform's own DOI-resolved index with each external source's own reported total — see Cited by above for individually listed citing works. Last refreshed 0 seconds ago.