What the strong correlation between export growth and poverty reduction shows, however, is that policies that encourage the growth of exports and integration in the global economy can at the same time be poverty-reducing. This statement, however, has been questioned by some, as globalization is believed to have intensified poverty through adverse distributional changes. For this reason it will be useful to decompose the changes in poverty in the three broad country groupings into distribution and growth components and investigate the quantitative significance of each to the observed change for the reduction in poverty.