Sir Angus Deaton is the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of International Affairs, Emeritus, Professor of Economics and International Affairs, Emeritus, and Senior Scholar at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. A leading scholar in Business & Economics, he joined the faculty in 1983 as Professor of Economics, Public, and International Affairs and became Senior Scholar and Emeritus Professor in 2016. Born in Edinburgh, Deaton attended Hawick High School alongside future Nobel Laureate Richard Henderson, then Fettes College and Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge, where he was an Exhibitioner in Mathematics and earned his PhD in 1974. His career began with a brief role at the Bank of England, followed by research officer at Cambridge’s Department of Applied Economics working with Sir Richard Stone on planning for growth, and appointment as Professor of Econometrics at the University of Bristol in 1975.

Deaton’s research specializations include health, happiness, development economics, poverty, inequality, and methods for collecting and interpreting policy-relevant evidence, with pioneering analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare that earned him the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in 2015. He has authored nearly 200 papers in professional journals, including “Rising Morbidity and Mortality in Midlife Among White Non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st Century” (with Anne Case, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2015), “Mortality and Morbidity in the 21st Century” (Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2017), and “Measuring and Understanding Behavior, Welfare, and Poverty” (American Economic Review, 2016). Major books are The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality (Princeton University Press, 2013), Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism (with Anne Case, Princeton University Press, 2020, New York Times best-seller), and Economics in America: An Immigrant Economist Explores the Land of Inequality (2023). Deaton’s work has shaped understandings of economic development, welfare measurement, and social crises like deaths of despair. He served as President of the American Economic Association, is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, American Philosophical Society, Fellow of the British Academy, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, holds honorary doctorates from Cambridge, Edinburgh, St Andrews, and others, and was knighted in 2016.

Professional Email: deaton@princeton.edu