The poverty effect of democratization

•We examine the interrelatedness between regime types of democracy and non-democracy and poverty reduction.•We find democratization reduces poverty rates by about 11–14% in the first 5 years and about 20% after 10-14 years in treatment effects estimates.•We find no statistically significant effect in dynamic panel estimates (Two-way Fixed Effects and GMM).•This suggest that electoral democracy does not have a clear-cut effect on poverty.•The mixed results are supported by theory and could be due to data limitations.