Their findings indicate that the methodology that is generally used in empirical studies on growth, poverty and inequality usually overestimates the effects of growth on poverty. This implies that economic crises or economic booms have less of an influence on poverty than they are generally assumed to have. This supports the focus on raising incomes which has been the preferred strategy for fighting poverty in Brazil. They find that the growth of mean income and income distribution are sufficient to account for a large part of the variations in poverty rates observed at the state level in Brazil.