The relationship between economic growth and income distribution is one of the most important relations of economics. Its studied started with the early classical political economists and the different ways in which the variables connect to each other and its impact on the economy gave rise to different patterns of growth. The aim of the paper is to review how the history of the theories of economic though analyse the relationship between growth and income distribution, from the time of Adam Smith until the present. In order to do this, the paper will be structured in five main sections. Next Section will study the positive theory of income distribution, beginning with the classical economists’ analysis of the functional distribution of income between wages, profits and rent while section III presents the main arguments and critiques made by Marx to the classical school. Section IV pays attention to the theories that emerged with the Marginalist revolution which radically alter the way of thinking economic problems basing them on maximizing behaviour, market supremacy and perfect competition. Section V deals with the Keynesian revolution since the General Theory and how the most prominent Post-Keynesian has study the relationship between growth and distribution until our days. Section VI presents the view of the new classical political economy school which tries to bring the core of the classical political economy to the XXI century. In the last section we end the paper by presenting the main conclusions.