Abstract
• This paper shows that the longstanding relationship between growth and distribution in economics has been revived in recent years with greater focus on inclusive growth as growth that is capable of benefiting much larger sections of the society.
• The extensive descriptive review of a broad set of development indicators for the past two decades and an estimation of a combined single score for measuring ‘inclusive growth’ for individual countries has shown that overall North Africa has fared relatively better recently both in historical terms and compared
to many other regions.
• Moreover, the same decade saw a raft of other encouraging achievements: life expectancy rose,educational and health indicators improved, the number and proportion of slum dwellers declined and more people enjoyed civic amenities such as access to improved drinking water and sanitation.
• The main area where the region has noticeably lagged behind the rest of the world in recent years is its demographic momentum. Taking population size and growth into account qualifies some of the positive economic achievements of the region in the past decade. GDP growth in per capita terms appears much more modest. Strong supply-side demographic pressures will no doubt continue to persist for years and will accentuate the challenge of achieving inclusive growth in North Africa.
• This leads us to conclude that no matter what notion of inclusive growth we adopt, for the region, generating high quality employment will be an essential element and will pose one of main challenges to prospects for achieving inclusive growth. This wasalso clearly borne out by our estimations of the IG
score and the sensitivity analysis which underscored yet again the importance of employment indicators in the region
• The extensive descriptive review of a broad set of development indicators for the past two decades and an estimation of a combined single score for measuring ‘inclusive growth’ for individual countries has shown that overall North Africa has fared relatively better recently both in historical terms and compared
to many other regions.
• Moreover, the same decade saw a raft of other encouraging achievements: life expectancy rose,educational and health indicators improved, the number and proportion of slum dwellers declined and more people enjoyed civic amenities such as access to improved drinking water and sanitation.
• The main area where the region has noticeably lagged behind the rest of the world in recent years is its demographic momentum. Taking population size and growth into account qualifies some of the positive economic achievements of the region in the past decade. GDP growth in per capita terms appears much more modest. Strong supply-side demographic pressures will no doubt continue to persist for years and will accentuate the challenge of achieving inclusive growth in North Africa.
• This leads us to conclude that no matter what notion of inclusive growth we adopt, for the region, generating high quality employment will be an essential element and will pose one of main challenges to prospects for achieving inclusive growth. This wasalso clearly borne out by our estimations of the IG
score and the sensitivity analysis which underscored yet again the importance of employment indicators in the region
| Original language | English |
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| Publisher | African Development Bank |
| Publication status | Published - 2013 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Publication series
| Name | African Development Bank |
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