British-born economist Angus Deaton wins 2015 Nobel Prize for Economics

According to Bloomberg, the Royal Swedish Academy of Science said that to devise economic policy that reduces poverty and promotes welfare, it is crucial to first understand individual consumption choices.

Deaton joins a long list of Princeton scholars awarded the Nobel Prize, including 10 current members of the faculty, university officials said.

The 69-year-old laureate’s exploration has centered around wellbeing in both rich and poor nations, and additionally on measuring neediness in India and around the globe.

Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich used the skills of a journalist to create literature chronicling the great tragedies of the Soviet Union and its collapse: World War II, the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the suicides that ensued from the death of communism.

“To plan monetary approach that advances welfare and lessens destitution, we should first comprehend singular utilization decisions”, the Academy said.

“I feel passionately about measurement, about how hard it is, about how much theory and conceptualization is involved in it, and indeed how much politics is involved in it”, Deaton said. Deaton has done “very careful, detailed work” on data about poverty at the household level in poor countries “so that one could understand the effects of changes in policies on how people behave”, Rodrik said.

Prof. Deaton is best known for his work on health, well being, and economic development. The bank’s donation established the economic sciences prize 74 years after the Nobels were founded.

Deaton majorly worked on the low calorie consumption in Indian children and how it is linked to poverty.

Understanding how consumers distribute their spending among different goods is necessary for forecasting actual consumption patterns, and also crucial in evaluating how policy reforms, like changes in consumption taxes, affect the welfare of different groups.

Deaton, who was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, and holds USA and British dual citizenship, said he was delighted to have won the prize and was pleased that the committee had awarded research that concerns the world’s poor. “That lightning would strike me seemed like a very small probability event”, Deaton said in a statement released by the university Monday.

He says he believes that poverty worldwide is declining, though knowing exactly how many poor people there are is hard – and that the way to count it should not be just to look at incomes. The prize in economic sciences was added by Sweden’s central bank in 1968. The three winners will share the 8 million Swedish kronor (about $960,000) prize money, and each will get a diploma and gold medal at the annual Nobel Prize award ceremony in Stockholm on December 10.

The economics prize does include the Nobel name – it’s officially “The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel” – so it’s often referred to as a “Nobel Prize” and carries the full weight of that distinction, to the dismay of a few scientists.