How polarized is sub-Saharan Africa? A look at the regional distribution of consumption expenditure in the 2000s

Abstract

The resurgence of economic growth over the last two decades in sub-Saharan Africa has recently come under scrutiny by scholars, the main criticism being the lack of inclusiveness. While studies on inequality in sub-Saharan Africa are becoming numerous, less attention has been devoted so far to the growing polarization the region is undergoing. Polarization, as distinct from inequality, refers to the tendency of shifting away from the centre of a distribution to its tails, creating a hollowed-out middle. This paper, using a set of sub-Saharan African national household surveys, provides a first estimate of the regional expenditures’ polarization. This latter steadily increased throughout the 2000s and its growth was mainly driven by increasing polarization between countries, meaning sub-Saharan Africa tended to polarize spatially, with the Southern cone countries and some Western African countries performing above the average, and the rest of the region lagging behind.

The COVID-19 pandemic and polarisation of income distribution in South Africa

“…The relative distribution To ascertain if the description of the effects of the pandemic as described by Jain, et al, (2020), Ranchhod and Daniels (2020), and Rogan and Skinner ( 2020) is consistent with polarisation of the income distribution, the relative density methodology Morris, 1998, 2006) is used to compare the income distribution just before and during the pandemic. The importance of this methodology over other methodologies is that it is very granular, that is, it can indicate precisely where the polarisation is concentrated (Clementi, et al, 2018(Clementi, et al, , 2020. Furthermore, this approach allows for the separate estimation of the effects attributable to changes in location of the income distribution and those that are due to changes in the shape of the income distribution.…”

“…Specifically, we are interested in how polarised the April income distribution is relative to the February distribution net of the difference in the median of the two distributions. Following the exposition in Clementi, et al (2020), a brief review of the method is provided in the appendix (section S2 of the supplementary file). Here, we summarise the main points.…”

“…Inequality refers to the dispersion of the income distribution, that is, it is related to the deviation of the income distribution from the egalitarian distribution (Panek and Zwierzchowski, 2020). Polarisation, as distinct from inequality, refers to the tendency of mass shifting away from the centre of the income distribution to its tails, that is, a hollowing-out of the middle class (Clementi, et al, 2020). It is important to note that changes in polarisation may be different from, and even opposite to, changes in inequality.…”

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

“…Income polarization, defined as a divergence of income levels in a population, has been a topic of great interest in recent years, particularly outside Europe. Scholars have examined the matter in countries such as China (Araar 2008;Zhang and Kanbur 2001), India (Chakravarty and Majumder 2001;Motiram and Sarma 2014), Nigeria (Awoyemi and Araar 2009;, Sub-Saharan Africa (Clementi et al 2019(Clementi et al , 2021(Clementi et al , 2022a and Latin American countries (Deutsch et al 2014;Gasparini et al 2008), as well as in more developed countries like the United States and Canada (D'Ambrosio and Wolff 2001;Wolfson 1992, 2010). While there has been some research on income polarization in Europe, studies focused on this topic are relatively rare, and little attention has been paid to income polarization in new member states of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE NMS).…”

Measuring and Mismeasuring Income Polarization

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