We present a model that links the division of labor and economic growth with the division of wealth in society. When capital market imperfections restrict the access of poor households to capital, the division of wealth affects individual incentives to invest in specialization. In turn, the...

During the 1990s, China's poverty declined significantly across a wide range of poverty lines. China's poor have benefited much less from economic growth than the rich. Education is positively and significantly related to growth and poverty reduction - but the regional disparities of education...

In recent years there has been a growing interest in the impact of inequality on economic growth. Both theoretical and empirical approaches have produced ambiguous results on sign and size of this relationship. Although there is a considerable part of the literature that considers inequality...

Just as equality of opportunity becomes an increasingly prominent concept in normative economics, the authors argue that it is also a relevant concept for positive models of the links between distribution and aggregate efficiency. Persuasive microeconomic evidence suggests that inequalities in...

The authors study the sources and pattern of China's impressive economic growth over the past 25 years and show that key issues currently of concern to policymakers - widening inequality, rural poverty, and resource intensity - are to a large extent rooted in China's growth strategy, and...

During the nineteenth century, most Western societies extended the franchise, a decision which led to unprecedented redistributive programs. We argue that these political reforms can be viewed as strategic decisions by political elites to prevent widespread social unrest and revolution....

This paper challenges the current belief that income inequality has a negative relationship with economic growth. It uses an improved data set on income inequality which not only reduces measurement error, but also allows estimation via a panel technique. Panel estimation makes it possible to...

Transition economies have an initial condition of high human capital relative to living standards. I explore the possible implications of this key fact by surveying and adapting literature on growth and inequality. I focus especially on the long run and policy options

We use 20 household surveys for India's 15 major states spanning 1960?1994 to study how the sectoral composition of economic growth and initial conditions interact to influence how much growth reduced consumption poverty. The elasticities of measured poverty to farm yields and development...

This study examines the effects of China’s industrial clusters on its economic growth and urban–rural income inequality. A density-based index (DBI) is developed to capture the unique features of such clusters in China. From a county-level DBI panel data constructed based on firm-level and...