Angus Deaton

I was born in Edinburgh, in Scotland, a few days after the end of the Second World War. Both my parents had left school at a very young age, unwillingly in my father's case. Yet both had deep effects on my education, my father influencing me toward measurement and mathematics, and my mother toward writing and history. ”

I argue that experiments have no special ability to produce more credible knowledge than other methods, and that actual experiments are frequently subject to practical problems that undermine any claims to statistical or epistemic superiority. ”

If poverty and underdevelopment are primarily consequences of poor institutions, then by weakening those institutions or stunting their development, large aid flows do exactly the opposite of what they are intended to do. ”

Like many in academia and in the development industry, I am among globalization's greatest beneficiaries - those who are able to sell our services in markets that are larger and richer than our parents could have dreamed of. ”

International development aid is based on the Robin Hood principle: take from the rich and give to the poor. ”

The educational highlights I remember were not in the classroom. My father spent a lot of time with me when he could. He taught me how to take square roots, a skill I have retained but do not use often, except to check that I still remember. ”

The school in the Yorkshire mining village in which my father grew up in the 1920s and 1930s allowed only a few children to go to high school, and my father was not one of them. He spent much of his time as a young man repairing this deprivation, mostly at night school. ”

The best moments are when, together with... you bring information, you bring data to bear in a way that helps illuminate something that you just don't really understand. Even if it doesn't completely clarify it, it just, you know, helps bring it together. ”

It's hard to know what's going to be replaced by technology tomorrow. It feels like we're all at risk. I feel only safe as an emeritus professor! ”

We are trying to say that low income and low job opportunities, after a long period of time, tears at the social fabric. ”