Quotes from Angus Deaton

Economic growth has been the engine of international income inequality.

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but there is nothing that guarantees a successful pregnancy.

The need to do something tends to trump the need to understand what needs to be done.

the top 10 percent of tax units in 2011 commanded 47 percent of all income, with an average income of $255,000. (A tax unit is not identical to a family, nor is income for tax purposes the same as other measures of income, but the overlaps are big enough that these trends are not misleading.)

As we shall see, GDP is a poor indicator of wellbeing, but it is limited even as a measure of income. It includes income generated in the United States that belongs to foreigners; it includes incomes in the form of undistributed corporate profits (which ultimately belong to shareholders) as well as surpluses run by federal, state, and local government.

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.

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.

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

It's hard to think that Mark Zuckerberg is actually impoverishing anyone by getting rich with Facebook. But driverless cars are another matter entirely.

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

Globalization and technical change are the guarantee of our future prosperity. And reversing on that will not only make things worse, but it will make things worse for a very large number of people around the world who have benefitted - people in China and India who have been dragged out of the most awful poverty.

People on left have to better understand what are the benefits of inequality, and people on right have to understand better what the dangers are... It has to become properly hardwired into the American democratic debate in a way that it hasn't really been.

Without properly functioning civil courts, there is no guarantee that innovative entrepreneurs can claim the rewards of their ideas.

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 both love inequality and am terrified of it.

Economic growth is very important, but it is not the only thing, and it must be accompanied by sharing with those who are left behind, through effective social services and provision.

I'm not a left-wing nut pushing for single-payer!

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.

The history of Montana has been of the government giving land grants to people that could not possibly turn it into decent farms. And that's destroying their lives. So they don't see the government as something that's out there to help them.

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.

I have the great good fortune that one of my collaborators in work, Anne Case, is also my collaborator in life.

A good theoretical account must explain all of the evidence that we see. If it doesn't work everywhere, we have no idea what we are talking about, and all is chaos.

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.

China and India are the success stories; rapid growth in large countries is an engine that can make a colossal dent in world poverty.