IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/chb/bcchec/v5y2002i2p17-36.html

Quantity and Quality of Economic Growth

Author

Listed:
  • Robert J. Barro

Abstract

Most cross-country studies of economic performance have focused on narrow economic variables. The present study emphasizes instead some quality dimensions of economic development, including health, fertility, income distribution, political institutions, crime, and religion. The data reveal a regular pattern in which economic development goes along with higher life expectancy and reduced fertility. Improvements in the standard of living are also associated with expansions of democracy, increased maintenance of the rule of law, and reductions in official corruption. Despite the presence of a Kuznets curve, little of the variations in income inequality are explained by the overall level of economic development. Crime rates, proxied by murder rates, also bear little relation with the level of development but are more closely associated with income inequality. Finally, there is some support for the secularization hypothesis, in that economic development is typically accompanied by lower levels of church attendance and religious beliefs. However, religiosity is positively related to education, holding fixed other indicators of economic development.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert J. Barro, 2002. "Quantity and Quality of Economic Growth," Journal Economía Chilena (The Chilean Economy), Central Bank of Chile, vol. 5(2), pages 17-36, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:chb:bcchec:v:5:y:2002:i:2:p:17-36
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://si2.bcentral.cl/public/pdf/revista-economia/2002/agosto2002/recvol5n2ago200217_36.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mark Chaves & David E. Cann, 1992. "Regulation, Pluralism, and Religious Market Structure," Rationality and Society, , vol. 4(3), pages 272-290, July.
    2. Lipset, Seymour Martin, 1959. "Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy1," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 53(1), pages 69-105, March.
    3. Deininger, Klaus & Squire, Lyn, 1996. "A New Data Set Measuring Income Inequality," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 10(3), pages 565-591, September.
    4. Gene M. Grossman & Alan B. Krueger, 1995. "Economic Growth and the Environment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(2), pages 353-377.
    5. Fajnzylber, Pablo & Lederman, Daniel & Loayza, Norman, 2002. "What causes violent crime?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(7), pages 1323-1357, July.
    6. Barro, Robert J, 2000. "Inequality and Growth in a Panel of Countries," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 5-32, March.
    7. Laurence R. Iannaccone, 1991. "The Consequences of Religious Market Structure," Rationality and Society, , vol. 3(2), pages 156-177, April.
    8. Robert Summers & Alan Heston, 1991. "The Penn World Table (Mark 5): An Expanded Set of International Comparisons, 1950–1988," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(2), pages 327-368.
    9. Easterly, William, 1999. "Life during Growth," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 4(3), pages 239-276, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dollar, David & Kraay, Aart, 2002. "Growth Is Good for the Poor," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 7(3), pages 195-225, September.
    2. Richard Bluhm & Adam Szirmai, 2011. "Institutions, Inequality and Growth: A review of theory and evidence on the institutional determinants of growth and inequality," Papers inwopa634, Innocenti Working Papers.
    3. Gravier-Rymaszewska, Joanna & Tyrowicz, Joanna & Kochanowicz, Jacek, 2010. "Intra-provincial inequalities and economic growth in China," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 237-258, September.
    4. Frazer, Garth, 2006. "Inequality and development across and within countries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 34(9), pages 1459-1481, September.
    5. Martin Baur, 2010. "Politics and Income Distribution," Chapters, in: Neri Salvadori (ed.), Institutional and Social Dynamics of Growth and Distribution, chapter 3, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    6. Easterly, William, 2007. "Inequality does cause underdevelopment: Insights from a new instrument," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(2), pages 755-776, November.
    7. McCleary, Rachel & Barro, Robert, 2003. "Religion and Economic Growth across Countries," Scholarly Articles 3708464, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    8. Jakub Bartak & Łukasz Jabłoński, 2020. "Inequality and growth: What comes from the different inequality measures?," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 72(2), pages 185-212, April.
    9. Maier, Rolf, 2005. "External Debt and Pro-Poor Growth," Proceedings of the German Development Economics Conference, Kiel 2005 23, Verein für Socialpolitik, Research Committee Development Economics.
    10. Adelaide Duarte & Marta Simões, 2009. "Channels of transmission of inequality to growth: A survey of the theory and evidence from a Portuguese perspective," GEMF Working Papers 2009-07, GEMF, Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra.
    11. Rolf Maier, 2005. "Exchange Rate Regimes and Pro-Poor Growth," International Finance 0504008, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Bjørnskov, Christian, 2004. "Inequality, Tolerance, and Growth," Working Papers 04-8, University of Aarhus, Aarhus School of Business, Department of Economics.
    13. Svedberg, Peter, 2003. "World Income Distribution: Which Way?," Seminar Papers 724, Stockholm University, Institute for International Economic Studies.
    14. Justina A.V. Fischer & Antonio Rodríguez Andrés, 2005. "Is Software Piracy a Middle Class Crime? Investigating the inequality-piracy channel," University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series 2005 2005-18, Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen.
    15. Dierk Herzer & Philipp Hühne & Peter Nunnenkamp, 2014. "FDI and Income Inequality—Evidence from Latin American Economies," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(4), pages 778-793, November.
    16. Kraay, Aart, 2004. "When is growth pro-poor? Cross-country evidence," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3225, The World Bank.
    17. Daniele Checchi & Cecilia García‐Peñalosa, 2010. "Labour Market Institutions and the Personal Distribution of Income in the OECD," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 77(307), pages 413-450, July.
    18. McCleary, Rachel & Barro, Robert, 2002. "Religion and Political Economy in an International Panel," Scholarly Articles 3221170, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    19. Elina Tuominen, 2024. "Top-end inequality and growth: empirical exploration of nonlinearities and the time dimension," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 22(2), pages 311-331, June.
    20. Shinhye Chang & Rangan Gupta & Stephen M. Miller, 2018. "Causality Between Per Capita Real GDP and Income Inequality in the U.S.: Evidence from a Wavelet Analysis," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 135(1), pages 269-289, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:chb:bcchec:v:5:y:2002:i:2:p:17-36. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Fredherick Sanllehi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bccgvcl.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.