Poverty, Equality, and Growth

In contrast to the large indigent population in Japan in the 1950s, very few Japanese live in poverty in the 1990s. This text explains the Japanese government's decision to respond to poverty by promoting equality as the basis for a social compromise. Deborah Milly argues that to account for why and how political actors crafted a programme that won acceptance, we must look beyond them and identify how they relied on knowledge and normative arguments.