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Distinctions must be kept in mind between quantity and quality of growth, between its costs and return, and between the short and the long term. Goals for more growth should specify more growth of what and for what.

— Simon Kuznets Simon Kuznets in: Herbert David Croly eds (1962)

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Source: Simon Kuznets in: Herbert David Croly eds. (1962) The New Republic Vol. 147. p. 29: About rethinking the system of national accounting
Work: Simon Kuznets in: Herbert David Croly eds, 1962
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

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The central theme of this paper is the character and causes of long-term changes in the personal distribution of income. Does inequality in the distribution of income increase or decrease in the course of a country's economic growth? What factors determine the secular level and trends of income inequalities?

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The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income.

The paper is perhaps 5 per cent empirical information and 95 per cent speculation, some of it possibly tainted by wishful thinking.

[An] epochal innovation [consisting of the] spreading application of science to processes of production and social organization.

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[The principal characteristic of this economic epoch is] a sustained increase in per capita or per worker product, most often accompanied by an increase in population and usually sweeping structural changes.

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The rural and urban populations does not necessarily drift downward in the process of economic growth: indeed, there is some evidence to suggest that it is stable at best, and tends to widen because per capita productivity in urban pursuits increases more rapidly than in agriculture.

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