In its economic dimensions, development is concerned with raising peoples' material welfare. This, in turn, can be thought of as the product of three interrelated factors: the efficiency with which existing resources are employed; the growth of productive resources over time; and the ways in which the resulting output and income are distributed among the factors of production and different income groups. Underlying and influencing these basic determinants of welfare is a certain social and economic structure. It is this structure, how it changes and the relationship of these changes to economic development that is the subject of this paper.