Tornado Alley (PROG)

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Growth Versus Distribution: Hunger Games

March 28, 2014, 10:06 am

It’s fairly common for conservative economists to try and shout down any discussion of income distribution by claiming that distribution is a trivial matter compared with the huge gains from economic growth. For example, Robert Lucas .. https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications_papers/pub_display.cfm?id=3333&; :

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Of the tendencies that are harmful to sound economics, the most seductive, and in my opinion the most poisonous, is to focus on questions of distribution.
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The usual answer to this is to point out that we don’t actually know much about how to produce rapid economic growth — conservatives may think they know (low taxes and all that), but there is no evidence to back up their certainty. And on the other hand, we know how to make a big difference to income distribution, especially how to reduce extreme poverty. So why not work on what we know, as at least part of our economic strategy?

But even this argument may be conceding too much. A new study .. http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/03/27/294895305/a-booming-economy-doesnt-save-children-from-malnutrition .. finds that in poor and lower-middle-income countries, one of the most crucial aspects of well-being, child malnutrition, isn’t helped at all by faster growth:

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An increase in GDP per capita resulted in an insignificant decline in stunting. And when the researchers compared the changes in GDP to the changes in the number of wasting and underweight children, there was no correlation at all.

“It wasn’t that [the association] was just weak or small,” Subramanian told Shots. That was the case, he said, especially for stunting. More striking was the fact that the effect overall “was just practically zero.” He says things like unequal income distribution and lack of efficient implementation of public services are possible causes.
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Yes, rapid growth is good, but it doesn’t solve all problems even if you know how to make it happen, which you don’t.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/28/growth-versus-distribution-hunger-games/

.. yep, growth is fine, just let's not forget the welfare of all people along the way ..