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Kenya: Income Distribution and Poverty–an Unfashionable View

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Arthur Hazlewood
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Extract

Kenya has a bad image among those who see themselves as ‘friends of the people’, who for many years must have thought of it as the land where it is always 1788. But although some years ago we were informed by a reliable authority that ‘Africa is ripe for revolution’, in Kenya up till now – though who dares predict what will be in the newspapers tomorrow? – it is still not 1789: the revolution has not arrived.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , March 1978 , pp. 81 - 95
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

page 81 note 1 International Labour Office, Employment, Incomes and Equality: a strategy for increasing productive employment in Kenya (Geneva, 1972),Google Scholar which is the main source of the facts in most subsequent discussions of income distribution in Kenya; The World Bank, Kenya: into the Second Decade (Baltimore and London, 1975);Google Scholar and Heyer, Judith et al. (eds.), Agricultural Development in Kenya: an economic assessment (Nairobi, 1976).Google Scholar For those who like their prejudices raw there is Cliffe, Lionel, ‘Underdevelopment or Socialism? A Comparative Analysis of Kenya and Tanzania’, in Harris, Richard (ed.), The Political Economy of Africa (Cambridge, Mass. 1975);Google Scholar those who prefer them from the kitchen of a master chef can go to Leys, Colin, Underdevelopment in Kenya: the political economy of neocolonialism, 1964–1971 (London, 1975).Google Scholar Earlier expressions of my own ideology may be found in Holtham, Gerald and Hazlewood, Arthur, Aid and Inequality in Kenya: British development assistance to Kenya (London, 1976),Google Scholar particularly chs. 2, 6, and 8, and in The Economic Journal (London), 09 1974, pp. 716–21.Google Scholar

page 83 note 1 Government of Kenya, Development Plan, 1974–78 (Nairobi, 1974).Google Scholar

page 83 note 2 I.L.O. Report, p. 254.

page 83 note 3 Hodd, Michael, ‘Income Distribution in Kenya (1963–72)’, in The Journal of Development Studies (London), 04 1976.Google Scholar

page 84 note 1 See Government of Kenya, Economic Survey, 1976 (Nairobi, 1976), p. 15.Google Scholar

page 84 note 2 Published for the World Bank in 1974 and 1975, respectively.

page 85 note 1 I.L.O. Report, p. 345.

page 86 note 1 See Killick, Tony, ‘Strengthening Kenya's Development Strategy: opportunities and constraints’, Discussion Paper No. 239, Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi, 10 1976;Google Scholar and Heyer, op. cit. p. 240.

page 87 note 1 Usher, Dan, The Price Mechanism and the Meaning of National Income Statistics (Oxford. 1968), p. xi.Google Scholar

page 88 note 1 Ibid. p. 53.

page 88 note 2 To this extent the argument used by Kravis, I. B. et al. in A System of International Comparisons of Gross Product and Purthasing Power (Baltimore and London, 1975), p. 18,Google Scholar about the revealed preference of those in ‘the peasant and subsistence sectors’ for the consumption patterns of ‘middle-income urban dwellers’, is entirely valid. See below for further discussion of this point.

page 89 note 1 Chenery, Hollis et al. Redistribution with Growth (Baltimore and London, 1974), p. 6.Google Scholar

page 89 note 2 Ibid. p. 10.

page 89 note 3 Kenya: into the Second Decade, p. 46.

page 89 note 4 Chenery et al. op. cit. pp. 11–13.

page 89 note 5 Ibid. p. 13.

page 90 note 1 E.g. ‘In Kenya, wage earners, especially in the urban formal sector, represent a privileged minority of the labor force’, Kenya: into the Second Decade, p.100; and ‘Persons with incomes between £200 and £600 may be labelled the middle.income groups: this group would include a significant proportion of the employees in the non-agricultural formal sector’, I.L.O. Report, p. 75.

page 91 note 1 Kravis et al. op. cit.

page 92 note 1 I.L.O. Report, p. 276.

page 92 note 2 Ibid. p. 588.

page 92 note 3 The welfare loss in moving back to the old way of life would therefore be greater than the original gain from moving Out of it.

page 93 note 1 The Times (London), 4 01 1977.Google Scholar

page 94 note 1 See Heyer, op. cit. p. 23.

page 94 note 2 Livingstone, Ian, ‘Cowboys in Africa: the socio-economics of ranching in Kenya’, Occasional Paper No. 14, Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi, 07 1975.Google Scholar

page 95 note 1 Cliffe, loc. cit. p. 156.

page 95 note 2 See Killick, op. cit. for a thoughtful and balanced review of the question.