Poverty, Inequality and Growth: the East Asian experience

This chapter focuses on the poverty, inequality and growth trends in four low and middle-income countries in East and South East Asia – namely the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, and Mongolia, in the decade post-2000. Considering the landscape of social policies, including health and education in the four East Asian countries, it discusses how successful the countries have been in reducing poverty and inequality. The chapter assesses social protection systems, including access to health and education in East and South East Asia from two key parameters: level of public expenditure on social protection, health and education, and coverage or universalization of different programs. Although universal coverage is associated with low poverty and inequality, high cost of public expenditure is used to argue against it. Higher levels of economic growth are associated with increasing inequality levels.

Cite as: Balasubramanian, P. (2022). Poverty, inequality and growth: The East Asian experience. In A. Breuer, D. Malerba, S. Srigiri, & P. Balasubramanian (Eds.), Governing the interlinkages between the SDGs: Approaches, opportunities and challenges (pp. 192–210). Routledge.