An Empirical Assessment of Pro-Poor Growth in Moroccan Regions: Inclusion of Intra-Regional Inequalities

Abstract

Aware of the issues linked to inequality and growth and their implications for poverty, our article aims to empirically assess the “poverty-growth-inequality” triangle at the level of Morocco's 12 regions over the period 2001 to 2014. The approach adopted is based on the decomposition methods of Kakwani and Prenia, making it possible to measure the total elasticity of poverty to growth and inequality, and then to quantify pro-poor growth and pro-poor policy indices by region. As such, the contribution of this work is to introduce income inequalities within regions instead of total inequalities in the understanding of spatial inequality policies affecting regional poverty and growth. These inequalities are calculated using Dagum's (1989) decomposition and incorporated into the estimated models.  The main results of our study confirm the presence of significant and differentiated effects of inequality and growth on regional poverty reduction, with a greater effect of inequality.

Received: 15 September 2024 / Accepted: 5 November 2024 / Published: 20 November 2024