ABSTRACT
As the opening extract suggests, there are widespread concerns about poor areas, particularly when they persist amidst robust aggregate economic growth. In assessing the social impact of economic growth or growth-oriented economic reform, economists have traditionally focused on the impact on one or more measures of
social welfare, including various measures of aggregate poverty. Yet, it appears that impacts are typically diverse among the poor, and in the society as a whole; some lose and some gain from economy-wide changes. This can be important to know, if only to better understand the political economy of growth and reform, though policymakers may well also make the (normative) judgment that a premium should be attached to more "balanced" growth. Studying these diverse impacts may also hold important keys to our understanding of the growth process itself and to a variety of questions often asked by policymakers, such as what is the best policy response to the problem of why some subgroups are lagging.
