Lionel Robbins Memorial Lecture Series

Poverty, Inequality and the Political Economy of Measurement

Date: Tuesday 9th, Wednesday 10th and Thursday 11th December 2014
Time: 18:30 - 20:00
Venue: LSE Old Theatre
Speaker: Professor Angus Deaton

TUESDAY 9 DECEMBER - LECTURE 1 -A menagerie of lines: how to decide who is poor?

Global poverty has been falling rapidly, even as income inequality has been inexorably rising in most of the world. Perhaps paradoxically, global income inequality has been falling. Or has it? Many claim not. Angus Deaton will discuss recent trends in poverty and inequality, nationally and internationally, and will ask why recent growth has brought such meagre reductions in poverty. He will also argue that measurement depends, not only on theory, but also on politics, and explain why and how the politics of poverty is so often disguised as science. The lectures will ask how we know what we know about poverty and inequality, discuss the many unresolved difficulties of measurement, and make proposals for improvement.

LECTURE 1 - A menagerie of lines: how to decide who is poor?
LECTURE 2 - Getting prices right: the mysteries of the index
LECTURE 3 - Papal infallibility? Global poverty and the mystery of global inequality

About the speaker: Angus Deaton is the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Economics Department at Princeton University. His main research areas are in health, wellbeing, and economic development. His current focus is on the determinants of health in rich and poor countries, as well as on the measurement of poverty in India and around the world.

For more information on how to attend, please visit the LSE Events office webpage at:
http://www.lse.ac.uk/publicEvents/events/2014/12/20141209t1830vOT.aspx.