Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences awarded to poverty researcher Angus Deaton
Angus Deaton, a British-American economics professor at Princeton University, has been awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize for Economic Studies for his analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences highlights Deaton’s achievements in the field of household consumption surveys. They are powerful keys to transforming development economics from a theoretical to an empirical field based on detailed individual data. As such, they can serve as a guide for implementing economic development policies.
Deaton’s current research interests include “determinants of health in rich and poor countries, as well as on the measurement of poverty in India and around the world”, focusing especially on establishing a reliable measuring system for poverty and well-being (http://scholar.princeton.edu/deaton).
The difficulties of defining poverty are explored in his 2004 essay“Measuring poverty”, as well as his 2003 essay“How to Monitor Poverty for the Millennium Development Goals”.
Deaton also is the author of the 2013 bookThe Great Escape, which explains the improvement of people’s lives through economic growth, but also highlights the persisting and increasing levels of inequality.
