Humberto Barreto wrote:  
  
"How about William Easterly, _The Elusive Quest for Growth_ (MIT Press   
paperback edition, 2002), Chapter 13: Polarized Peoples, p. 265:  
'This story predicts that high inequality goes with low growth. This is   
indeed what researchers have found: higher inequality in income or land   
is associated with lower growth'."  
  
  
I've known about Easterly's book, but I haven't studied it carefully.  I   
think he's mistaken in his claim that researchers have found that "high   
inequality goes with low growth."  Just check the available data, some   
of which I produced yesterday.  
  
Indeed, it used to be argued, from Kuznets's inverted U curve, that   
inequality will increase with growth, but decrease at higher levels of   
per capita income.  This was an inference from cross-section data where   
many low income countries tend to have just about the same Gini   
coefficients as many high-income countries, whiles the middle-income   
countries tend to have higher Gini coefficients (inequality).  But   
recent research attempting to trace the evolution of equality in   
specific countries hasn't been so kind in confirming the "prediction."   
So, the effort now is to attempt to explain inequality not from growth   
itself, but from some other "social" factors.  
  
Indeed, land reform in Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea that went along   
with their economic development after WWII, and has been cited,   
especially by those who want to argue the egalitarian theory of growth,   
in support of the distribute-then-grow hypothesis.  But I don't know of   
any widespread evidential support for that hypothesis: several other   
countries have experienced growth without first engaging in income or   
land redistribution.  Some researchers would attempt to explain away   
the lack of general confirmation by noting that it depends on how land   
redistribution (reform) is undertaken.  Helpful, if peacefully;   
unhelpful, if with violence, as in a revolution.  That is why I'm   
interested in learning from Polly Cleveland what she knows to the contrary.  
  
James Ahiakpor