Pro-Poorness Orderings

An indicator of pro-poorness of a growth profile associated with a distribution of income is a measure of the extent to which growth is biased towards the poor. This paper proposes a general approach to pro-poorness, called the progressive sequential averaging principle (PSA), relaxing the requirement of rank preservation due to growth. An endogenous benchmark for evaluating the growth of poor comes out naturally from this principle. A dominance relation on the basis of the above approach for a class of growth profiles is introduced through a simple device, called the PSA curve and its properties are examined in relation to the standard dominances in terms of the generalized Lorenz curve and the inverse generalized Lorenz curve. The paper concludes with an application to evaluate growth profiles experienced by the United States between 2001-2007 and 2007-2013.