Rich Man, Poor Man is a 1969 novel by Irwin Shaw. It is the last of the novels of Shaw's middle period before he began to concentrate, in his last works such as Evening In Byzantium, Nightwork, Bread Upon The Waters and Acceptable Losses on the inevitability of impending death. The title is taken from the nursery rhyme "Tinker, Tailor". The novel was adapted into a 1976 miniseries.

Irwin Shaw was an American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and short-story author whose written works have sold more than 14 million copies. He is best known for two of his novels: The Young Lions (1948), about the fate of three soldiers during World War II, which was made into a film of the same name starring Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift, and Rich Man, Poor Man (1970), about the fate of two brothers and a sister in the post-World War II decades, which in 1976 was made into a popular miniseries starring Peter Strauss, Nick Nolte, and Susan Blakely.