Is tourism-led development inclusive? Tourism structure, gender inequality, and poverty dynamics in Asia-Pacific economies

The purpose of this research is to explore whether there is an economic relationship in regard to tourism and poverty amongst 16 different countries of the Asia-Pacific region. The empirical findings in this paper reveal that when accounting for development status, temporal persistence, structural heterogeneity and other factors, tourism is not positively associated with reducing poverty. Therefore, it appears that tourism's ability to reduce poverty is an indirect function of various structural, economic and institutional factors rather than through its own inherent mechanisms or activities. In contrast, gender inequality exhibits a strong, positive association with poverty intensity across both static and quantile specifications. The substantial temporal persistence of poverty suggests that sectoral tourism expansion alone is insufficient to generate sustainable welfare improvements without broader structural inclusion, particularly gender equity.