Lisa Capretti, Lorenzo Tonni
arXiv 17 Feb 2026 · Econometrics
arXiv:2602.15690 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text
The empirical literature on the relationship between income inequality and economic growth has produced highly heterogeneous and often conflicting results. This paper investigates the sources of this heterogeneity using a meta-analytic approach that systematically combines and analyzes evidence from relevant studies published between 1994 and 2025. We find an economically small but statistically significant negative average effect of income inequality on subsequent economic growth, together with strong evidence of substantial heterogeneity and selective publication based on statistical significance, but no evidence of systematic directional bias. To explain the observed heterogeneity, we estimate a meta-regression. The results indicate that both real-world characteristics and research design choices shape reported effect sizes. In particular, inequality measured net of taxes and transfers is associated with more negative growth effects, and the adverse impact of inequality is weaker - or even reversed - in high-income economies relative to developing countries. Methodological choices also matter: cross-sectional studies tend to report more negative estimates, while fixed-effects, instrumental-variable, and GMM estimators are associated with more positive estimates in panel settings.
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The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.
| Reference | Intensity | Mentions | Sections | Main text | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | De Dominicis, Laura and Florax, Raymond JGM and De Groot, Henri LF (2008) A meta-analysis on the relationship between income inequality and economic growth | 1.000 | 15 | 4 | 100% |
| 2 | Cunha-Neves, Pedro and Afonso, Oscar and Silva, Sandra Tavares (2016) A meta-analytic reassessment of the effects of inequality on growth | 0.984 | 21 | 5 | 95% |
| 3 | Persson, Torsten and Tabellini, Guido (1991) Is inequality harmful for growth? Theory and evidence | 0.928 | 4 | 3 | 100% |
| 4 | Deininger, Klaus and Squire, Lyn (1996) A new data set measuring income inequality | 0.737 | 3 | 2 | 100% |
| 5 | Berg, Andrew and Ostry, Jonathan D and Tsangarides, Charalambos G an… (2018) Redistribution, inequality, and growth: new evidence | 0.644 | 2 | 2 | 100% |
| 6 | Gründler, Klaus and Scheuermeyer, Philipp (2018) Growth effects of inequality and redistribution: What are the transmission channels? | 0.644 | 2 | 2 | 100% |
| 7 | Herzer, Dierk and Vollmer, Sebastian (2012) Inequality and growth: evidence from panel cointegration | 0.644 | 2 | 2 | 100% |
| 8 | Perotti, Roberto (1996) Growth, income distribution, and democracy: What the data say | 0.644 | 2 | 2 | 100% |
| 9 | Barto s, Franti sek and Maier, Maximilian and Wagenmakers, Eric-Jan… (2023) Robust Bayesian meta-analysis: Model-averaging across complementary publication bias adjustment methods | 0.511 | 2 | 1 | 100% |
| 10 | Galor, Oded and Moav, Omer (2004) From physical to human capital accumulation: Inequality and the process of development | 0.511 | 2 | 1 | 100% |
Showing the top 10 of 55 scored citations.