Measuring pro-poor growth in non-income dimensions

Current concepts and measures of pro-poor growth are entirely focused on the income dimension of well-being. This neglects non-income dimensions of poverty as well as the multidimensionality of poverty and well-being. In this paper, we extend the pro-poor growth toolbox to individual and composite measures of non-income achievements. In particular, we apply growth incidence curves, the Ravallion-Chen pro-poor growth rate and the poverty-equivalent growth rate to a range of non-income indicators such as education, mortality, vaccinations, stunting, and a multidimensional well-being measure. We are thereby able to study improvements in these dimensions of well-being at various points of the distribution of those indicators as well as at various points of the income distribution. This way we can determine whether improvements in non-income indicators were pro-poor in an absolute or relative sense, and whether they benefited the income poor more than others. We illustrate this empirically for Bolivia during 1989-98. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.