Changing Views on Growth: What Became of Pro-poor Growth?

Over the decades, the views on the interrelation between poverty reduction, inequality and growth have undergone different waves within the development community. Development discourse in the decades after the Second World War was largely framed by Kuznets’ model. This model proposed rising inequality levels in the early stages of the growth process in developing countries, and falling inequality at later stages (inverted ‘U’ curve). The 1980s were dominated by the Washington Consensus which called for macroeconomic stabilization and economic liberalisation by poor countries as a means of achieving sustained growth.