Revisiting the Kuznets Curve: Relevance and Application in the Modern Economic Era --- Introduction: The Curve That Promised Progress In the realm of development economics, few concepts have spurred as much debate, hope, and reinterpretation as the Kuznets Curve. Proposed by economist Simon Kuznets in the 1950s, the curve suggested that as a nation industrializes, inequality initially rises and later falls—forming an inverted U-shaped relationship between income inequality and per capita income. This idea promised that inequality was a temporary phase of development, eventually giving way to a more equitable distribution of income. However, as the world grapples with persistent inequality, climate change, urbanization, and complex globalization, the applicability and accuracy of the Kuznets Curve are being increasingly scrutinized. Furthermore, environmentalists have borrowed and modified the concept to develop the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), hypothesizing a similar inverted-U r...
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