It is by now generally agreed that economic growth is by no means a sufficient condition for ending the unholy trinity of unemployment, inequality and poverty. In recent years, as readers of the IDS Annual Reports will know, a great deal of work has been done at the Institute on the theoretical and practical problems of egalitarian, poverty-oriented, development strategies. IDS economists who had taken part in the ILO Employment missions to Colombia, Sri Lanka and Kenya had been feeling the need to explore the technical possibilities of incorporating distributional objectives in growth models, and quantifying policy options. Starting from a slightly different position, several staff economists of the World Bank had become aware of the same need.