Poverty Reduction and Growth Interactions: What Can Be Learned from the Syrian Experience?

(english) The aim of this paper is to realize an in-depth analysis of the growth and poverty interactions in Syria, which undertook a series of economic reforms in the past decade to reduce the intervention of the Government in the economy. One of the main tools of the pro-poor growth literature used is the index developed by Bibi (2010), which takes into account at the same time the evolution of the welfare variable and its distribution. The results show that during the 1996-2004 period growth was not equitable at both national and regional levels. When the objective of halving poverty in 2015 is used as a benchmark, growth is pro-poor neither at the national level nor in the majority of the regions. Moreover, the main other characteristic of the Syrian growth and poverty performance is the widening of the gap between urban and rural areas. This could be mainly due to a pattern of growth where oil played an increasing role and agriculture a decreasing one. Agricultural and land policy reforms could have had a negative impact on poverty in some rural regions, such as the North-Eastern rural region, despite their positive effect on agricultural productivity. _________________________________ (français) L’objectif de cet article réaliser une analyse approfondie des interactions entre croissance et pauvreté en Syrie, pays ayant mis en place une série de réformes économiques dans la décennie passée pour réduire l'intervention de l'État dans l'économie. Un des principaux outils d’analyse de la croissance pro-pauvres auxquels on fait appel est l’indicateur développé par Bibi (2010), qui prend en compte à la fois l’évolution de l’agrégat de bien-être et sa distribution. Nos résultats montrent que la croissance en Syrie n’a pas été équitable au cours de la période 1996-2004. Lorsque l’on utilise comme référence le taux de croissance qui permettrait de réduire de moitié la pauvreté en 2015, la croissance n’apparaît pro-pauvre ni au niveau national, ni dans la majorité des ré(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)