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Reflections on the “Equity and Development” World Development Report Ten Years Later

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Inequality and Growth: Patterns and Policy

Part of the book series: International Economic Association Series ((IEA))

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Abstract

It is fair to say that in the mind of its instigators ‘inequality’ rather than ‘equity’ was to be the dominant theme of the 2006 World Development Report. Its goal was to challenge the dominant view, in the World Bank and elsewhere in the development community, that, in their aim to reduce and possibly eradicate poverty, development strategies should focus mostly on aggregate growth. The main idea to be developed in the report was that the whole distribution of income within the population, rather than only its mean, mattered and should be a major concern for policy makers. Namely, the degree of inequality of the income distribution affected poverty reduction in two ways. Not only was it reducing the share of the gain from growth actually accruing to the poorest, but it was also slowing down growth itself.

The main ideas in this paper were first presented at the workshop on “Inequality and Development” jointly organized by the International Economic Association and the World Bank in June 2014 at the Dead Sea in Jordan. I thank the participants to the workshop for helpful comments with special thanks to Francisco Ferreira, Martin Ravallion and Michael Walton who commented on a previous draft of this paper.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Paris School of Economics, France

    François Bourguignon

Authors
  1. François Bourguignon
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. World Bank, Washington DC, USA

    Kaushik Basu (Chief Economist and Senior Vice President) (Chief Economist and Senior Vice President)

  2. Columbia University, New York, USA

    Joseph E. Stiglitz (University Professor) (University Professor)

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© 2016 International Economic Association

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Bourguignon, F. (2016). Reflections on the “Equity and Development” World Development Report Ten Years Later. In: Basu, K., Stiglitz, J.E. (eds) Inequality and Growth: Patterns and Policy. International Economic Association Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137554543_2

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