The Scottish economist won the Nobel Prize for “his analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare”, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said on Monday.
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Educated at Fettes College in Edinburgh and at Cambridge University, Angus Stewart Deaton is now professor of economics and global affairs at Princeton University in New Jersey and holds both United States and British citizenship. The secretary of the award committee, Torsten Persson, said Deaton’s research has really shown other researchers and worldwide organizations like the World Bank how to go about understanding poverty at a very basic level.
Answering questions at the press conference after the announcement, Deaton said he was “surprised and delighted” to win the prize.
“I thought if this is a prank, it’s a very, very good prank”, he said.
Angus Deaton is the sixth economist affiliated with Princeton University to receive a Nobel prize. “I must have said thank you about 150 times”.
In one key work, “The Great Escape; Health, Wealth and the Origins of Inequality”, Deaton describes the huge increase in global prosperity in the past two centuries, underpinned by medical and technological advances, but also looks in depth at the inequalities to which that progress has given rise.
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Professor Deaton received this year’s award for three achievements: for developing a system to estimate demand for different goods with John Muellbauer in the 1980’s; for his studies of the link between consumption and income in the 1990’s; and his survey work measuring living standards and poverty in developing countries.
