MiB: Angus Deaton on America’s Wealth & Inequality

March 29, 2024

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This week, we speak with Sir Angus Deaton, who was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2015. In 1976, he became a professor of econometrics at the University of Bristol and moved to Princeton as a professor of economics and international affairs in 1983. He is a senior scholar at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, and an emeritus professor in 2016. He is the author of almost 200 papers and six books, including the NYT best seller, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism (with Anne Case). His latest book is Economics in America: An Immigrant Economist Explores the Land of Inequality.

He explains why he came to America 40 years ago as a British economist. At the time, the United States had become the center of economic thought and paid professors much more than the UK did.

We also discussed the minimum wage, health care here, and the impact of economic inequality on growth. Deaton cites data that states getting a 4-year college degree is the single most impactful factor on a wide range of subsequent outcomes: Not just employment and earnings but divorce rate, health outcomes, life expectancy, incarceration, and suicide rates.

A list of his favorite books is here; A transcript of our conversation is available here Tuesday.

You can stream and download our full conversation, including any podcast extras, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Ed Hyman, founder and chairman of Evercore ISI, where he has been head of Economic Research for the past 48 years. He has been ranked as #1 in economics by Institutional Investor poll of investors 43 consecutive times.