Natural Resource Wealth, Development and Social Policy: Evidence and Issues

Abstract

Natural resource wealth potentially provides a source of funds for governments to invest in development. But several recent studies have suggested that countries rich in natural resources have in fact performed poorly in developmental terms. Prior to the late 1980s, natural resource wealth was widely seen as a blessing for developing countries. In the 1960s, for instance, the prominent development theorist Walter Rostow (1961) argued that natural resource endowments would enable developing countries to make the transition from underdevelopment to industrial ‘take-off, just as they had done for developed countries such as Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom (UK). In the 1970s ..