Economic development, the family and income distribution: selected essays

Economic development, the family, and income distribution is a collection of essays, published posthumously, by Simon Kuznets, winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize in economics. It represents the primary concerns of his research at a late phase of his career as well as themes from his earlier work.
The first four chapters deal with "modem economic growth." In Chapters 1 and 4, Kuznets discusses what he calls economic growth's "driving forces," departing from his usual insistence on measurement to speculate on causation.

Chapters 5 and 6 introduce the main theme of the remainder of the volume: interrelations be tween demographic change and income inequality. Chapter 5 considers a developed country-the United States-and Chapter 6, today's developing countries. Kuznets questions how the demo graphic transition from initially high to eventually low mortality and fertility rates, with associated differences by economic and social class, affects income distribution between rich and poor. He also considers the rising share of the elderly in the population of the United States and asks what this bodes for income inequality in more advanced phases of modern economic growth.

Chapter 7 outlines the main issues on which Kuznets focused later in his career. Most studies of income inequality examine the distribution of income among families or households. But families differ in the number of members, and if, for example, family size were typically greater in higher income families, then the distribution of income among families would not correctly reflect the distribution among persons. Moreover, because the needs of children are less than those of adults, systematic differences in age composition between rich and poor families might under mine the pertinence of the income distribution among families, even if the number of family members were constant. Thus, income inequality: is better measured in terms of consumer equivalents,