Q.'A country can experience economic growth without economic development.' Explain this statement with reference to income distribution.

Whether growth also counts as development depends heavily on WHO captures the additional income being generated.

Economic growth is typically measured as a rise in total or per-capita national income — both of which are averages (or totals) that say nothing about how that income is spread across the population. If the additional income generated by growth flows disproportionately to a small section of society (say, owners of capital in a few fast-growing industries) while wages and living conditions for the majority of workers and farmers remain largely unchanged, then:

• Real GDP and even per-capita income (a pure average) will show a healthy rise — by definition, this IS growth.
• Yet poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy and poor health may persist largely unchanged for most of the population, because the gains never reached them.

This is precisely why economic development is defined more broadly than growth: it explicitly requires that the benefits of growth be widely and fairly distributed, translating into real improvements — falling poverty, rising literacy, better health — for the population at large, not merely a rising national or per-capita total. A country can therefore post strong, sustained GDP growth for years while its Human Development Index or PQLI (see the next sections) improves only marginally, if inequality is severe enough — exactly the growth-without-development case the statement describes.

Assuming that because per-capita income is 'per person', a rise in it automatically means every person is better off — per-capita income is a simple AVERAGE and reveals nothing about how income is actually distributed across the population.