I was startled to read Polly Cleveland's claim that "as any development economist can tell us, growth proceeds faster in more egalitarian societies with relatively low levels of corruption." I'd like to have some documentation of the claim because, for more than two decades of teaching development economics, I have yet to find such evidence with respect to egalitarianism causing growth. She may have a point with respect to corruption. In fact, I just looked up some of the data on growth in per capita income (1980-2000) in Meier and Rauch (2005) and Gini index (as a measure of egalitarianism or income distribution) from World Development Report (2003) and found hardly any firm association between growth and distribution. Thus, Thailand had an average annual growth rate of 4.6%, India 3.8%, Malaysia 3.6%, Sri Lanka 3.1%, Chile 3.0%, USA 2.2%, and UK 2.1%. Their respective Gini indexes are 41.4, 37.8, 49.2, 34.4, 56.7, 40.8, 36.8. Of course, some of the worst performing economies over the period also had higher Gini indexes: Nigeria -2.7% (50.6), Nicaragua -2.7 (60.3); note that these countries had the complications of war or political instability. In fact, one may argue the causality the other way around: the faster the growth of an economy, the more egalitarian income distribution may get over time. This because what we call income distribution is simply another name for the relative contributions of different members of a society to total income production. There is no one out there handing different individuals or groups their shares of "national income." Government policies may hold down the growth of income for the more industrious and thus create a more egalitarian society but in which most people are poor. On the other hand, policies may enable people to take advantage of their talents and industry and generate more incomes for themselves. As growth (of the economy) occurs, indexes of egalitarianism may worsen. But as demand for the services of the less industrious grows over time, their incomes may rise and the inequality decrease. Deng Xiaoping may have put this insight best when, in liberating the Chinese economy from its Maoist strappings, he argued that it was better for some to get ahead for the rest to follow than all (that is, most) of the Chinese people being held down in poverty. China's Gini index in 1998 was 40.3, which I'd bet would be higher than what it was in 1976. I suspect its estimate in 2006 may still be higher. My next graduate class in development economics is scheduled for this fall. I'm genuinely interested in Polly Cleveland's pointing to the evidence in support of her claim so I may enrich my instruction or, at least, not mis-educate my students. James Ahiakpor