Nobel Prize in Economics awarded for new methods of poverty research
Americans Michael Kremer and Abhijit Banerjee and his French wife, Esther Duflot, have won the Nobel Prize in Economics for their research that helps fight poverty.
“This year's laureates have developed a new approach to getting reliable answers about the best ways to fight global poverty. The results of their work and of the researchers following in their footsteps have significantly improved our ability to fight poverty in practice, ”the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement.
The award-winning research involves dividing the problem of poverty into smaller, more manageable questions - for example, the most effective measures to improve educational outcomes or child health. It has shown that these smaller, more accurate questions are often best answered through carefully designed experiments among the people most affected by low incomes.
As a direct result of one of their studies, over five million Indian children have benefited from effective remedial education programs in schools. Another example is the large subsidies for preventive health care that have been introduced in many countries.
The three 2019 laureates will share 9 million SEK (approximately US $ 915,000). Esther Duflot is the second woman in history to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics (the first in 2009 was Elinor Ostrom). Duflo is also the youngest Nobel laureate in economics (46 years old). She and her husband Abhijit Banerji became the first married couple to jointly receive the Nobel Prize in Economics.