Rostow's stages of growth
Rostow's Stages of Economic Growth model is one of the major historical models of economic growth. It was published by American economist Walt Whitman Rostow in 1960. The model postulates that economic growth occurs in five basic stages, of varying length:
Traditional society
Transitional society
Take-off
Drive to technological maturity
High mass consumption
Rostow's model is one of the more structuralist models of economic growth, particularly in comparison with the "backwardness" model developed by Alexander Gerschenkron, although the two models are not mutually exclusive.
Rostow argued that economic take-off must initially be led by a few individual economic sectors.