Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/128580 
Year of Publication: 
2015
Series/Report no.: 
ADB Economics Working Paper Series No. 461
Publisher: 
Asian Development Bank (ADB), Manila
Abstract: 
Over the last 2 decades the distribution of private household expenditures has become more unequal in the Lao People's Democratic Republic, with the Gini coefficient rising from 0.311 to 0.364, even though absolute poverty incidence has halved. The increase in inequality was statistically significant and reduced the average rate of poverty reduction per year by about 28%, meaning the actual rate compared with the counterfactual rate that would have occurred if the mean real expenditures had increased at their observed levels but inequality had not changed. When the data are decomposed into rural and urban areas of residence or by province, or by the ethnicity of the household head, the increase in inequality within groups dominates any changes between groups; inequality has increased throughout the country. In contrast, access to publicly provided services has become more equal; disparities in participation rates between richer and poorer groups have diminished.
Subjects: 
expenditure inequality
Gini coefficient
Lao PDR
poverty reduction
JEL: 
D31
D39
I39
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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