This paper explores the relationship between inequality and growth and questions the interactions between the growth and inequality and poverty. It also examines the implications of the growth-inequality relationship for poverty, the patterns of development that encourage inequality-reducing growth and the factors that generate inequality inducing growth. It also looks at distribution of consumption expenditure in relation to consumption poverty and distribution of income in relation to income inequality. These issues are explored in relation to the Sri Lankan context for the period 1985/86 to 1990/1991.