Pathways to the Middle Class in Turkey : How Have Reducing Poverty and Boosting Shared Prosperity Helped?

Azevedo, Joao Pedro ; Atamanov, Aziz

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ABSOLUTE TERMS;    ACCESS TO EDUCATION;    ACCESS TO MARKETS;    AGRICULTURAL EMPLOYMENT;    AGRICULTURAL SECTOR;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-6834
RP-ID  :  WPS6834

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Turkey's poverty reductionperformance in the 2000s has been remarkably consistent.Extreme and moderate poverty have fallen considerably since2003. Between 2002 and 2011, extreme poverty fell from 13percent to 5 percent, while moderate poverty halved from 44percent to 22 percent (respectively, defined using the WorldBank's Europe and Central Asia regional poverty linesof 2.5 and 5 USD/PPP). Most of this poverty reduction (89percent) has been driven by growth, a performance consistentwith most countries in Europe and Central Asia. This issubstantially different form the recent performance of otherregions, such as Latin America, where redistributioncontributed to poverty reduction almost four times more thanin Turkey. Turkey has also achieved sustained consumptiongrowth of the bottom 40 percent of the population, evenduring the years of the world recession. Turkey'sperformance in poverty reduction and increased sharedprosperity has been complemented by the systematic expansionof the middle class by 20 percentage points. This paperanalyzes the main drivers of poverty reduction, sharedprosperity, and changes in inequality in Turkey from 2002 to2011. The analysis shows that labor markets, demographics,pensions, and social assistance have played a critical rolein this process. It further explores some of the mechanismsthat have facilitated these changes.