Poverty under the Kuznets process.

Abstract

The object is to investigate the behaviour of poverty indices during the course of development. Since development is a complex process all its different facets cannot be captured in a single model. While the Kuznets model permits an analysis of distributional change, it does not contain an adequate explanation of how and why the population shift takes place. Presents a model of migration which does rationalize the Kuznets process. Section I sets up the Kuznets process formally, and analyzes the behaviour of 2 classes of poverty indices. Section II traces the poverty implications of the Todaro (1969) model of migration, and arrives at conclusions somewhat different from those of Fields (1979). Section III concludes the paper.-from Authors