reuters4henriot300_1
Image

Brazil experienced an economic boom in the late 1960s. With its gross national product growing handsomely at a rate of 7 percent to 8 percent, Brazil was praised by many development economists as an example of diversified, investment-led prosperity. But while the industries of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo produced remarkable riches, the favelas, or crowded slums, in these same cities showed miseries disturbingly unimproved. The rewards of economic growth were not shared by the masses of Brazilians. The Brazilian military dictator of the day is alleged to have said, Brazil has taken off…and left the Brazilians behind!

The sad truth of his observation has come home to me recently because of two personal experiences. The first is the practical day-to-day fact of living in a developing African country, where economic growth rates are accelerating but social growth rates are not. Although the annual G.N.P. in Zambia in 2007 grew by 6 percent or 7 percent, the indicators of poverty show little or no improvement. What eco-nomists like to call shared growth is not a fact in this mineral-rich countryjust as it was not in Brazil decades earlier.

The second reason for recalling the dictators observation is that last year was the 40th anniversary of a great papal teaching on development, Read the editors and Mary McGrory on Populorum Progressio, from 1967.

This article appears in March 24 2008.