One third of the world’s growth and inequality by Danny Quah ∗ LSE Economics Department March 2002 ∗ Ithank the MacArthur Foundation for financial support. Ihave received many helpful suggestions from colleagues, including Abhi- jit Banerjee, Tim Besley, Richard Blundell, Andrew Chesher, Frank Cowell, Bill Easterly, Theo Eicher, Raquel Fernandez, Chico Ferreira, James Feyrer, Oded Galor, Cecilia Garc´ia-Pe˜nalosa, Louise Keely, and Branko Milanovic. Also useful were Clarissa Yeap’s research as- sistance in the early stages of this work and Claudia Biancotti’s Ec473 LSE seminar presentation, in the spring of 2001. All calculations and graphs were produced using LATEX and the author’s econometrics shell tsrf. One third of the world’s growth and inequality by Danny Quah LSE Economics Department March 2002 ABSTRACT This paper studies growth and inequality in China and India—two economies that account for a third of the world’s population. By modelling growth and inequality as components in a joint stochastic process, the paper calibrates the impact each has on different welfare indicators and on the personal income distribution across the joint population of the two countries. For personal income inequalities in a China-India universe, the forces assuming first-order importance are macroeconomic: Growing average incomes dominate all else. The relation between aggregate economic growth and within-country in- equality is insignificant for inequality dynamics. Keywords: China, distribution dynamics, Gini coefficient, head- count index, India, poverty, world individual income distribution JEL Classification: D30, O10, O57 Communications to: Danny Quah, Economics Department, LSE, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE Tel: +44/0 20 7955-7535, Email:
[email protected] (URL) http://econ.lse.ac.uk/staff/dquah/ One third of the world’s growth and inequality by Danny Quah ∗ LSE Economics Department March 2002 1 Introduction Three concerns underly all research on income inequality and eco- nomic growth.