Can growth and equity go hand in hand?

This article presents the issue in the context of the theoretical and empirical debate, started by Kuznets, on the possibility of achieving growth with equity. The conclusion is that there is no inevitable conflict between these two goals, provided that economic policy promotes the areas of complementarity between growth and equity. It therefore rejects the approaches which assume that there is an insoluble conflict between these objectives, such as the “trickle-down” theory (which stoically accepts that such a conflict exists and proposes that those affected should wait as long as is necessary for their situation to improve) and the contrasting “parallel” approach (which suggests that growth should be sacrificed in favour of equity, with social policy being entrusted with the correction of the worst distributive effects of economic policy).