Fractional persistence in income poverty in Africa.

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Abstract

This paper examines income poverty in Africa by looking at the time series properties of the series corresponding to the household consumer expenditures in 53 African countries. Using fractional integration the results indicate that the series are highly persistent, displaying orders of integration in the interval (0, 1) in some countries or values equal to or higher than 1 in some others. The main implication of the empirical findings is that long term policies aimed at addressing income poverty in the continent such as the policies on expansion of infrastructure and social amenities will have have long-lasting effects on poverty reduction.