Income Distribution, Poverty, and Environmental Problems

Abstract

Growing inequality and environmental degradation are two serious problems that developing economies will have to face in their economic growth processes geared for reducing absolute poverty. These problems are closely interrelated. For example, the importation of labour-saving industrial technologies from high-income countries tends to increase returns to capital relative to labour, thereby increasing the incomes of the property-owning rich relative to the poor owning no other productive means other than their own labour. Such technologies are adopted often without accompanying adequate investment in pollution control, resulting in horrible environmental pollution. Institutional innovations are needed to prevent income inequality and environmental degradation from rising, while sustaining the growth of developing economies.