the hypothesis that as an economy develops, market forces first increase and then decrease economic inequality. The hypothesis was first advanced by economist Simon Kuznets in the 1950s and '60s. Highly contested
Kuznets hoped that inequality would fall; he originally regarded his theory as 'perhaps 5 per cent empirical information and 95 per cent speculation, some of it possibly tainted by wishful thinking', but it was so enthusiastically received that he shed his doubts and the 'Kuznets Curve' soon gained the status of a natural law.