What Obstructs and What Facilitates Poverty Removal

It has been noted in many economic and statistical analyses that when stagnant economies are subjected to the process of economic growth and begin to leave their stagnation behind, overall growth is often accompanied by a maldistribution of income and, consequently, by a maldistribution of wealth. This is often the case because the beneficiaries of the growth process are almost invariably the active agents in the process — the entrepreneurs, the manufacturers, the farmers who have surpluses to sell, the traders, the exporters and the importers. That is to say, the economically resilient members of the society who come to participate actively in the growth process, also come to receive the benefits. The other less resilient and non-participating members who often constitute the large bulk of the society get left behind. There are generally very large numbers of them and they constitute by far the larger proportion of the population. There are perhaps very few societies in the world — perhaps none — in earlier as well as in more recent centuries which have passed through the process of the economic growth without a maldistribution of income and wealth, at any rate in the initial decades of the process.