Angus Deaton Quotes

Angus Deaton

Profession : Economist

Birth : October 19, 1945

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.

Angus Deaton

There's this narrative that is entrenched in some of the professions that there's this mysterious thing called 'socioeconomic status' that is immutably correlated with health. And it isn't.

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.

Angus Deaton

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.

Angus Deaton

It's a murky world out there, and it's hard to figure things out sometimes.

Angus Deaton

Without effective states working with active and involved citizens, there is little chance for the growth that is needed to abolish global poverty.

Angus Deaton

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.

Angus Deaton

The call to rein in globalization reflects a belief that it has eliminated jobs in the West, sending them East and South. But the biggest threat to traditional jobs is not Chinese or Mexican; it is a robot.

Angus Deaton

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.

Angus Deaton

Aid can only reach the victims of war by paying off the warlords and, sometimes, extending the war.

Angus Deaton

In Scotland, I was brought up to think of policemen as allies and to ask one for help when I needed it.

Angus Deaton

A lot of people, including me, are worried that inequality will lead to bad things.

Angus Deaton

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.

Angus Deaton

Political and legal institutions play a central role in setting the environment that can nurture prosperity and economic growth.

Angus Deaton

Many people have mixed views about unions, but unions used to give people some measure of control at work. They gave them a social life and political representation in Washington, which doesn't really exist anymore.

Angus Deaton

I think inequality has gone past the point where it's helping us all get rich, and it's really becoming a serious threat.

Angus Deaton

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.

Angus Deaton

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.

Angus Deaton

Parents tend to value their lives more highly than people without kids, but they're different in lots of ways: They're richer. They're better educated. They're healthier.

Angus Deaton

Policies aimed at reversing globalization will lead only to a decrease in real income as goods become more expensive.

Angus Deaton