Are We Really Painting the Devil on the Walls? Polarization and Its Drivers in Sub-Saharan Africa in the Past Two Decades

Abstract

The development path of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) over the past two decades has been characterized by sluggish poverty reduction occurring alongside robust economic growth. Applying polarization measures to comparable survey data from 24 SSA countries, we find that there has been a generalizable increase in polarization over the past two decades—and in particular, an increased concentration of households in the lower tail of the welfare distribution of SSA countries. The polarization process is further analyzed by identifying the main drivers and singling out the effect of different covariates at different points in the consumption distribution. This investigation reveals that the drivers of polarization are relatively similar across SSA: demographic, urban/rural, regional variables and access to basic infrastructure are found to be the most important drivers of polarization in many countries.

Unraveling the Roots of Income Polarization in Europe: A Divided Continent

“…Starting precisely with the distinction between the analysis of income inequality and polarization, the paper adds to the scant literature present for the latter issue (D'Ambrosio 2001;Gradín 2000;Hussain 2009;Brzezi ński 2011;Poggi and Silber 2010). Further, it observes polarization using a method (i.e., relative distribution) hitherto sparsely employed for European countries, with few exceptions (Petrarca and Ricciuti 2016;Nissanov and Pittau 2016), which allows us to observe how incomes are distanced from each other from an absolute rather than relative point of view (Clementi et al 2022b), as shown by other indexes proposed in previous research.…”

Measuring and Mismeasuring Income Polarization

“…The subject matter and methodology inClementi et al (2021) are the same as those presented inClementi et al (2022a).…”