Biographical note: GalbraithJohn Kenneth: John Kenneth Galbraith was Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics, Emeritus, at Harvard University. James Goodman is Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University.

This paper discusses two issues in the relationship between inequality and economic growth: the data and the econometrics. We first review the income inequality data set of Deininger and Squire (D&S), which, we argue, fails to provide either adequate or accurate coverage, whether through time or...