While poverty reduction is clearly an issue of raising the income levels of the poor on a
sustainable basis, there are many dierent ways of trying to achieve this. In broad
terms, though we can think of poverty reduction coming about through growth or
income redistribution or both. However, whatever emphasis one places on the
importance of redistribution, it seems clear that growth in mean incomes must play a
crucial role in achieving sustained poverty reduction in developing countries. Declin-
ing per capita incomes in many developing countries over the 1980s, especially in
Africa, must explain a lot of the increases in poverty in those countries over that
decade.