These then use their extra income in the same way and so a virtuous spiral is set up, self-reliance is increased, and the economy is built.But more equality alone does not necessarily promote economic growth - after all the Soviet economies had plenty of equality and their economies ran into the sand. That is what we have done.' "People in socially cohesive societies work harder, one egalitarian argument goes. Dr Richard Jolly, the co-ordinator and principal author of the "Human Development Report", said last week after launching it in East Asia that he found it was taken for granted there that greater equality promoted growth "It is a very tough-minded attitude, not sentimental at all They say: 'Of course equality works You have to give people a stake in the country. They have come back solemnly assuring us that the spectacular success of the "tigers" proves that Britain must be subjected to more of the same policies that have failed so comprehensively over the last 17 years, including less public spending and lower taxes.The World Bank and the UNDP - both of which have been intimately concerned with the development of these economies over decades - draw a very different lesson, and so, it appears, do the countries themselves.

They conclude that detailed analysis of nine OECD countries over more than 160 years shows that the higher the share of the national cake owned by the richest fifth of a country's population, the lower is its rate of growth Studies in developing countries, they add, support this. There is, adds the UNDP, "a positive correlation between economic growth and income equality".Over the last few years top Conservative politicians - including such former "wets" as Chris Patten and Michael Heseltine - have trekked eastwards in search of the elixir of growth. In Japan, for example, the proportion of the national income shared by the poorest fifth of its people doubled between 1960 and 1980 to 10 per cent, while the share of the wealthiest fifth fell from 50 per cent to 45 per cent.Mr Bruno, who is also the World Bank's vice-president for development economics, hammers the point home in his paper, co-authored with two senior colleagues. The Far Eastern countries enjoy far greater equality than the Latin American ones in both income and land ownership, and have grown very much faster. The "Human Development Report" shows that the Far Eastern tigers achieved staggering per capita growth of 7.6 per cent a year between 1960 and 1993 while maintaining, or improving, equality. It even calculates that if South Korea had been as unequal as Brazil back in 1960 its GDP 25 years later would have been 15 per cent lower than it actually was.The UNDP also points to Japan and Sweden, which combine much the best long-term growth record of industrialised countries with great reductions in inequality.

But this week's new evidence is an even more damning indictment. It suggests that too much inequality can even be bad for growth.The OECD report concludes that growing inequality is far from conducive to growth. It admits: "The future prosperity of OECD countries depends on reducing social and economic exclusion in the forms of high unemployment, non-participation in the labour market ... and, in some instances, growing inequalities in earnings and incomes."The equally orthodox World Bank is moving even further down the road to recantation.