ABSTRACT
All of the East Asian Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs), but especially Taiwan, 1 challenge the conventional views of both liberal and radical scholars about trends in inequality over the course of economic development. Following Kuznets (1955), in the 1960s and 1970s liberal economists generally maintained that over the course of development inequality exhibited a U-shaped pattern, rising in the early stages of growth, then falling in the final phase of transition to industrial status (Adelman and Morris 1973; Paukert 1973). At least since the 1960s, radical political economists have argued that inequality in Third World countries consistently worsened as integration into global economic systems proceeded (Frank 1969c; 1972; Wallerstein 1974). Yet on Taiwan, over a full century that spanned several different phases of development and integration into the global economy, the sometimes fragmentary data available suggest that during most periods economic inequality either remained stable or declined, finally evening off at a level that is remarkably low by the standards of both developing and developed societies.
