Book Chapter
Growth, Inequality, and Poverty

The recent backlash against globalization has given new impetus to an old debate on whether the poor benefit from economic growth. We seem to have irreconcilable positions about how much the world's poorest benefit from economic growth, growth that is fuelled by greater openness to foreign trade and investment. On the one hand, we have unyielding opinions that growth is poverty‐reducing, drawing on recent research work, which found that average incomes of the poorest quintile moved almost one‐for‐one with average incomes overall. And on the other hand, we have commentators who are equally confident that rising inequality is choking off potential benefits to the poor.