Inclusive Growth: An Application of the Social Opportunity Function to Selected African Countries

IMF Working Papers, June 3, 2013

Source details

Canonical URL: Inclusive Growth: An Application of the Social Opportunity Function to Selected African Countries

The inclusiveness of growth depends on the extent of access to economic and social opportunities.
The paper applies the concept of social opportunity function to ascertain the inclusiveness of growth episodes in selected African countries.
Premised on the concept of social welfare function, inclusive growth is associated with increased average opportunities available to the population and improvement in their distribution.
The paper establishes that the high growth episodes in the last decade in the selected countries came with increased average opportunities in education and health.
The distribution of such opportunities varied across countries, depending on the country-specific policies underpinning the growth episodes.

Analytical framework: social opportunity function, grounded in the concept of social welfare function.
Outcome dimensions analyzed: education and health (including completion rate, education enrollment, enrollment rate, primary school education, secondary education, mortality rate, health care).
Equity focus: assessment of both average opportunities and their distribution (social opportunity curve).

Improvements in average education and health opportunities accompanied high growth episodes in the studied countries.
Heterogeneity in distributional outcomes across countries implies a central role for country-specific policies underpinning growth episodes.
Policy emphasis: design and implementation of country-specific policies that simultaneously raise average opportunities and improve their distribution to achieve inclusive growth.