DPU Working Paper - No. 119
Economic Growth and Income Inequality: Theoretical Background and Empirical Evidence

27 August 2002
Author: Cesar Gallo
Publication Date: 2002
All sciences should be aimed at providing humanity with a better quality of life. The classical economists were concerned with this objective of Economics as a science. According to Adam Smith (1884), no society can be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.
David Ricardo placed the distribution of income at the centre of his thought when he stated that Political Economy should be aimed at determining the laws that rule the distribution of income (Bigsten, 1983; Ferrán, 1997, Atkinson, 1997). Hartwell (1972) goes further in arguing that “Economics is, in essence, the study of poverty” (p. 3).