Income Inequality among LDCs: A Comparative Analysis of Alternative Perspectives

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Abstract
This paper empirically examines several alternative explanations of income inequality among sixty-three less developed countries (LDCs). It finds substantial evidence relating the stock of foreign capital and the rate of economic growth to income distribution in the manner predicted by the newer dependency school and the modernization school, respectively. On the other hand, it fails to find support for the statist perspective, the democracy perspective, and the perspective on distributional coalitions. Instead, military participation and population density are found to exercise a more robust and significant influence in curtailing the income share of the wealthy and in raising the income share of the poor. The implications of these results for the various theoretical traditions are explored.

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