Prospects for Future Growth

In his seminal book, The Stages of Economic Growth, ¹ late MIT professor of economics Walt Whitman Rostow defines five hierarchical stages of economic development: (i) traditional society; (ii) transitional stage: the preconditions for take-off; (iii) take-off; (iv) drive to maturity and (v) the age of high mass consumption. The most critical of the five stages is the take-off stage, where “growth becomes a country’s normal condition” and eventually leads the country to stages four and five, where it achieves ongoing and self-sustaining wealth creation, higher levels of consumption and standards of living. ²