This study examines the complex relationships between economic growth and income inequality in different regions of Kazakhstan, revealing the nuances of their interaction. The article aims to assess the long-term and short-term effects of economic growth on income inequality in both forward and reverse directions across the regions of Kazakhstan. Employing region-specific time series data allowed us to examine the bidirectional impact of economic growth on inequality, using an error correction model (ECM) to describe short-run and long-run relationships. The results highlight that the relationship between economic growth and income inequality is heterogeneous across regions, reflecting each area's unique economic and social landscapes. The estimation results support the hypothesis of an inverted U-shaped Kuznets curve linking GRP per capita to inequality with varying starting points for different regions. Regarding the inverse relationship, we identified a positive causal relationship for the West Kazakhstan, Zhambyl and Pavlodar regions, indicating that increased income inequality stimulated economic growth. The study also highlights the significant role of trade, labour force, investment and government consumption in shaping these relationships.

This study investigates the relationship between tourism development and income inequality across regions of the Republic of Kazakhstan, using regional panel data for 2003–2024. The empirical analysis is based on an unbalanced panel of 16 regions, comprising 367 region–year observations. Fixed-effects regression models are employed to examine how two distinct dimensions of tourism development (tourism services per capita and tourist accommodation places per capita) affect income inequality measured by the regional Gini coefficient. The results indicate that the intensity of tourism service provision does not have a statistically significant effect on income inequality, even after controlling for cross-sectional dependence. In contrast, tourism accommodation infrastructure capacity is positively and statistically significantly associated with regional income inequality across all model specifications. Additional results show that income inequality is significantly influenced by poverty incidence, income polarization, healthcare expenditures, and the share of the rural population. The coefficients on the per-capita tourist accommodation variable are positive across all specifications. This indicates that the growth of this indicator contributes to increased income inequality. Moreover, the coefficients for the indicators ShServPop and ShServPop(–1) are significant. However, they cannot be relied upon, as Pesaran’s test rejects the hypothesis of cross-sectional independence for these specifications. This suggests that the growth of tourism infrastructure may exacerbate, rather than reduce, regional income differences due to capital concentration, skill-labor-oriented employment, and price effects. The results highlight the need for complementary policies that promote inclusive tourism development and mitigate inequality-enhancing effects of tourism-related infrastructure investment.