Wealth, poverty and starvation

THIS IS THE first major book which explicitly sets out to quantify and to explain inequalities of income and wealth, as well as poverty, t both the international and national level.

Its basic theoretical premise is that the explanations which account for the wealth or poverty of nations are very similar to those which account for wealth or poverty of individuals within nations. Major theories of wealth, inequality and poverty at the international, and national levels are reviewed. The structuralist explanation is adopted to inform the debates and the analysis of data. The book reviews post-war trends in economic growth and world inequalities as well as trends in the distribution of wealth and income within individual countries. It shows that these inequalities have proved very resistant to change.

It also examines the extent of poverty within the affluent countries and shows that despite some progress over the years, poverty still exists on a substantial scale. The evidence of famine, starvation and sub sistence poverty in the Third World, and the various explanations are also reviewed and it is shown that external factors are far more important than internal factors in explaining Third World poverty. The final chapter presents a brief and realistic but depressing con clusion on the forecast of trends in poverty and inequality in the immediate future to the year 2000.

This book is written in a non-technical manner and will be widely read and adopted by students in a wide range of social science courses, especially in politics, economics, sociology and social policy.