Income Distribution in Developing Economies Conceptual, Data,.pdf

Cornell University ILR School DigitalCommons@ILR Articles and Chapters ILR Collection 1995 Income Distribution in Developing Economies: Conceptual, Data, and Policy Issues in Broad-Based Growth Gary S. Fields Cornell University, gsf2@ Follow this and additional works at : /articles art of the Growth and Development Commons, Income Distribution Commons, International and Comparative Labor Relations Commons, and the Labor Economics Commons Thank you for downloading an article from DigitalCommons@ILR . Support this valuable re ource today ! This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the ILR Collection at DigitalCommons@ILR . It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles and Chapters by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@ILR . For more information, please contact hlmdigital@. Income Distribution in Developing Economies: Conceptual, Data, and Policy Issues in Broad-Based Growth Ab tract [Excerpt] The aim of economic development is to raise the standard of living of a country s people, especially its poor. Economic growth, particularly when broadly based, is a means to that end. Underdevelopment can be defined as a state of severely constrained choices. When one is choosing from among an undesirable set of alternatives, the outcome will itself be undesirable. Standards of living will be low. If standards of living are to be improved, people must have a better set of alternatives from which to choose. Economic development is the process by which the constraints on choices are relaxed. Based on ample evidence from microeconomic studies (see, for instance, the Nobel rize winning research of T. W. Schultz 1980), we may be confident that when poor people in the developing world have better opti