Tourism and poverty relief

Abstract

This paper examines the issue of how tourism affects poverty in the context of the effects of tourism on an economy as a whole and on particular sectors within it. A framework for analysing the channels through which tourism affects different households is developed, and a computable general equilibrium model of the Brazilian economy is used to examine the economic impact and distributional effects of tourism in Brazil. It is shown that the effects on all income groups are positive. The lowest income households benefit from tourism but by less than some higher income groups. Policies that could redistribute greater shares of the revenue to the poor are considered.