ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at some of the analyses of the concepts of 'economic growth and 'development' as they began to evolve in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Development studies began to flourish as an academic field of scholarship, research, teaching, learning and practice through in-depth country analyses. There began a fruitful exchange of studies and personnel between the United Nations (UN), centres of academic study and government ministries. The UN conferences on population picked up the significance of the historical experience, and economic historians and historical demography began to be invited to their sessions. The intention is to identity and trace the economic and social ideas that have come from, been stimulated by, debated, discarded or adopted by the UN since 1945. The range to be covered is breathtaking in the way their list of 'global challenges' reveals what the UN through its various organs and commissions has attempted to cover and promote.
