| This study chronicles the rise and ultimate demise of Simon Kuznets' “inverted U-curve hypothesis”—one of the most enduring and consequential theories in the history of the social science. The history of the inverted U-curve is analyzed from a sociology of science perspective in which three distinct periods are discussed: (1) The rise of the hypothesis from its initial publication in 1955 until the late 1970s when most scholars considered it to be an “iron law” of development; (2) A long decade of transitions from the late 1970s to the early 1980s in which shifts in available data, methodological practices, and theoretical orientations brought a critical challenge to the U-curve consensus; and (3) The demise of the U-curve, beginning in the late 1980s and continuing today, where the combined impact of widespread empirical disconfirmation and definitive shifts in political and theoretical conceptualizations of both “economic growth” and “income inequality” have led to the fall of the U-curve paradigm in the contemporary context.; It is argued that the rise and fall of the U-curve paradigm in cross-national inequality research is closely linked to significant transformations in the broader field of development economics that occurred during the last half of the twentieth century. In the end, Kuznets' original contribution is reassessed not as a discredited socio-economic theory, but as a methodological blueprint for future comparative inequality research. |
