The Examination of Convergence Regarding to Inclusive Growth between the Nuts Level 1 Regions In Turkey

Fair distribution of opportunities enabled by economic growth to different parts of society is as important as the\rquantitative increase in growth. It is possible to mention the inclusiveness of growth and an increase in social welfare\ronly if in case of growth accompanied by equal access to these opportunities. It is required to provide sustainable growth by generating and extending new economic opportunities to let each member of the society attend and utilize\reconomic growth. This becomes possible with inclusive growth. Inclusive growth has recently become a core\rissue in the development strategies of the countries. Each member of the society is enabled to contribute to\rand make use of economic growth using inclusive growth. The study is important within this scope. Based\ron this, in this study, the inclusive growth in Turkey is examined in a general and regional framework for the\rperiod 2006-2019. In terms of the literature reviewed in this study, it has been observed that there is no study\rexamining convergence in terms of inclusive growth for NUTS Level 1 regions in Turkey. In this sense, it is\rthought that the study will make an important contribution to the literature. It is aimed in the present study\rthat to observe how inclusiveness of growth has evolved and to examine the situation of NUTS Regions. Based\ron this, first, the inclusiveness of growth is examined with the method developed by Ali and Son (2007), and\rthen the existence of convergence between regions in terms of equity index of opportunity is tested with\rthe panel unit root test. The findings regarding the country, in general, reveal that there is a decrease in the\rinclusiveness of growth especially after 2016. According to the equity index of opportunity, TR4 East Marmara\rRegion performs the best, while the worst performance belongs to TR1 Istanbul Region. The convergence\rresults for the equity index of opportunity indicate that the TRC Southeast Anatolia Region converges to the\rTR4 East Marmara Region, which has the best performance. The results show that real production activities\rhave an increasing effect on equality of opportunity. The findings that inclusive growth occurs unevenly across\rregions are in line with other studies in the literature.