Kenya: Income Distribution and Poverty–an Unfashionable View

Abstract

Kenya has a bad image among those who see themselves as ‘friends of the people’, who for many years must have thought of it as the land where it is always 1788. But although some years ago we were informed by a reliable authority that ‘Africa is ripe for revolution’, in Kenya up till now – though who dares predict what will be in the newspapers tomorrow? – it is still not 1789: the revolution has not arrived.

Remittance and poverty in developing countries

“…For both sub-Saharan Africa and non-sub-Saharan Africa, it provided evidence that higher rates of inequality tend to increase poverty (Ravallion, 1997;Fosu, 2015). Obviously, a number of studies provide a definitive conclusion on the relationship between income inequality and poverty (Hazlewood, 1978;House and Killick, 1981;Adams, 2004). In their studies, income inequality plays an essential role in the transformation of economic growth to poverty reduction.…”

“…Here, POV is poverty and GDP is gross domestic product. Several crucial factors have been identified in the past, such as the role of income inequality (Hazlewood, 1978;House and Killick, 1981;Ravallion, 1997;Adams, 2004;Fosu, 2015) and inflation (Cardoso, 1992;Powers, 1995;Braumann, 2004;Chaudhry and Chaudhry, 2008). Hence, our augmented model becomes the following:…”

Transient and Chronic Rural Household Poverty: Evidence from Kenya

“…Most of the earlier studies in Kenya are static and descriptive in nature. Some of them focus on inequality and welfare (House and Killick, 1981;Hazlewood, 1981;and Bigsten, 1981) while several other studies have constructed poverty profiles (Foster, Greer and Thorbecke, 1984;Thorbecke, 1986a, 1986b;Mwabu et al, 2000;Manda et al, 2000;Geda et al, 2001;and Oyugi et al, 2001). Recently, Okwi et al (2006) used spatial regression techniques to explore the effects of geographic factors on poverty in Kenya.…”

The impact of microfinance on poverty and income inequality in developing countries

“…The pattern of income distribution has been a major concern among economists in determining a country's income level and development. Hazlewood (1978), House and Killick (1981), Ravallion (1997), Adams (2004), Fosu (2015), Van Leeuwen and Földvári (2016), Neaime and Gaysset (2018), Sehrawat and Giri (2016), and Leow and Tan (2019) examine the relationship between income inequality and poverty. These studies reveal that an increase in income inequality will lead to a significant increase in the poverty level.…”

“…Poverty and inequality may not change at the same rate and can even change in opposing directions. Hazlewood (1978), House and Killick (1981), and Adams (2004) find that reductions in inequality can directly lead to poverty reduction because higher equality increases incomes of the poor directly and investment by the poor in productive assets like education and health indirectly. This reflects the fact that as countries experience declining inequality, the countries likely grow their economies and lift people out of poverty.…”