Inclusive growth “combines increased prosperity with tackling inequality, creating opportunities for all and distributing the dividends of increased prosperity fairly”.

Economic Strategy, Scottish Government

Inclusive growth has attracted increasing research interest in recent years, for example:

From an analytical point of view inclusive growth is hard to define, quantify and evaluate in both policy and academic domains. Coinciding with the increasing academic interest in inclusive growth is the need for policymakers embracing the concept of inclusive growth to: plan, assess and implement measures that help delivery.

It is Policy Scotland’s view that inclusive growth policy initiatives need to be effective, imaginative and integrated for ‘places’ and ‘people’, to work at neighbourhood level as well as across cities, and metropolitan regions. If the concept is to be universally adopted, it needs to also be applicable in rural localities.

Scotland and the UK have a strong history of academic and research expertise in local, urban and regional economic analysis, especially in Glasgow where there has been extensive research undertaken on economic regeneration at neighbourhood level. It is our aim at Policy Scotland to support the coordination of research across academic, private, public and third sectors, at regional-metropolitan (and Scottish) levels.

Regional Inclusive Growth Research Network

Policy Scotland published an Issues Paper on City Deals and Inclusive Growth in 2018. The paper sets out a range of issues confronting researchers and policymakers considering links between the inclusive growth agenda and the deal-based decentralisation agenda (to sub-national entities).

Policy Scotland is supporting the Scottish Government with the coordination of an academic research network on inclusive growth to help profile the work of the academic and research community in key areas of debate and encourage the sharing of ideas, published material, and steer the coordination, collection and review of inclusive growth evidence.

The Regional Inclusive Growth Research Network (RIGRN) aimed to help shape, inform and respond to the evolving research agenda in this area, including responding and contributing towards policy development in support of the Scottish Centre for Regional Inclusive Growth (SCRIG).