Angus Deaton

“I don't think income solely determines health. I think lots of other things determine health.”

“The first thing we need to understand when we think about globalization is that it has benefited an enormous number of people who are not part of the global elite.”

“European countries give much larger shares of aid for poverty relief than the U.S.”

“Businesses have moved from doing business to doing lobbying, and I think that's a very bad thing.”

“I think putting numbers together into a coherent framework always seemed to me to be what really matters.”

“You can find episodes like the flu epidemic or war times when mortality rates go up, but sustained increases in mortality for any major group in any society are really quite rare. It's an indication that something is very wrong.”

“Americans, like many citizens of rich countries, take for granted the legal and regulatory system, the public schools, health care and social security for the elderly, roads, defense and diplomacy, and heavy investments by the state in research, particularly in medicine.”

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

“My work shows how important it is that independent researchers should have access to data so that government statistics can be checked and so that the democratic debate within India can be informed by the different interpretations of different scholars.”

“The absence of state capacity - that is, of the services and protections that people in rich countries take for granted - is one of the major causes of poverty and deprivation around the world.”

“Putting, say, an 85 per cent income tax rate is unlikely to bring in much revenue.”

“What is not OK is for rent-seekers to get rich.”

“When I was a boy living in Edinburgh in Scotland, especially in December, when the hours of daylight were few, and it was cold, and often wet, I used to dream of escaping to a tropical magic kingdom.”

“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.”

“Globalization obviously has the potential to be good. That doesn't mean it's good for everybody. There's a very large number of people in India and China who benefited directly from globalization, but it doesn't mean everybody in America benefits from globalization.”

“I feel passionately about measurement - about how difficult it is, about how much theory and conceptualization is involved in measurement, and indeed, how much politics is involved.”

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

“If someone thinks of something, some new innovation that benefits us all, and the market works properly, they get richly rewarded for that, and that's just terrific, and that creates inequality.”

“I don't think Brexit is going to help people in Britain.”

“I both love inequality and am terrified of it.”