Esther Duflo facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Esther Duflo
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Duflo in 2009
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| Born | 25 October 1972 |
| Spouse(s) | Abhijit Banerjee |
| Institutions |
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| Field | Development economics |
| Doctoral advisor |
Abhijit Banerjee • Joshua Angrist |
| Doctoral students |
Emily Breza • Dean Karlan • Rachael Meager • Vincent Pons |
| Contributions | Randomized controlled trials |
| Awards |
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| Information at IDEAS / RePEc | |
Esther Duflo (born October 25, 1972) is a French-American economist. She is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she studies how to help people escape poverty. In 2019, she won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. She shared the award with Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer. They won for their new way of testing ideas to reduce poverty around the world.
Duflo also helped start and leads the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT. This research center uses special experiments, called randomized controlled trials, to see if new policies really work. By 2020, programs tested by J-PAL researchers had helped over 400 million people. Since 2024, Duflo has also been the president of the Paris School of Economics.
Her research looks at how families and communities in developing countries make choices. She studies topics like education, money, politics, gender, and health. Before winning the Nobel Prize, she received other important awards. These include the Elaine Bennett Research Prize in 2002 and the John Bates Clark Medal in 2010.
With Abhijit Banerjee, Duflo wrote two books: Poor Economics (2011) and Good Economics for Hard Times (2019). Her work is often used in economics classes at universities.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Esther Duflo was born in Paris, France, on October 25, 1972. Her father was a math professor, and her mother was a children's doctor. Her mother often volunteered for groups that helped child victims of war. Duflo grew up in Asnières-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris. She finished high school in 1990 at Lycée Henri-IV in central Paris.
After high school, Duflo studied history and economics at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. She originally planned to focus on history. From 1993 to 1994, she worked in Moscow, Russia. There, she helped teach French and wrote her history master's paper. She also worked as a research assistant at the Central Bank of Russia. She helped Jeffrey Sachs, an American economist, who was advising the Russian government. This experience made her realize that economics could be a powerful tool to make a difference in the world.
She earned her master's degree in 1995 from DELTA (now the Paris School of Economics). While in Moscow, she met Thomas Piketty, who told her to apply to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She got into MIT's PhD program in economics in 1995. Her first class in development economics was taught by Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer. She would later share the Nobel Prize with them.
Duflo finished her PhD in 1999. Her research looked at a big school building program in Indonesia. She studied how more schooling affected people's future earnings. Her work showed that more education could lead to higher wages later in life.
Career
After getting her PhD in 1999, Duflo became an Assistant Professor of Economics at MIT. She was later promoted to Associate Professor and then to full professor. She was one of the youngest professors in her department to receive tenure, which means a permanent teaching position.
In 2003, Duflo, along with Abhijit Banerjee and Sendhil Mullainathan, received funding to start a new lab. This lab aimed to use randomized controlled trials to test how well different policies worked. This lab became the Poverty Action Lab, or J-PAL. It was officially named the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab in 2005.
J-PAL's first office outside of MIT opened in Chennai, India, in 2007. Since then, more offices have opened around the world. These include locations in Chile, Paris, South Africa, Egypt, and Indonesia. As of 2024, the J-PAL network includes 900 researchers from 97 universities.
Besides her work at J-PAL, Duflo is a researcher at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She is also on the board of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD). She leads the development economics program at the Centre for Economic Policy Research. Since 2023, she has held a special chair at the Collège de France. In 2024, she became president of the Paris School of Economics. She has also advised governments, including the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. From 2012 to 2017, she was part of President Barack Obama's Global Development Council.
Research
Duflo's research looks at many topics related to development. These include health, education, how people manage money, politics, gender, and family behavior. A key part of her research is using randomized controlled trials (RCTs). These are like scientific experiments that help her find out if a program or policy truly causes a change.
Education
Duflo's early research looked at a large school building program in Indonesia. Her study, published in a top economics journal, showed that children who had more schools available to them ended up with more education. They also earned higher wages as adults. This was important proof that getting more schooling can lead to better earnings later in life.
She has also used RCTs to improve education in developing countries. In 2007, she studied a program in India that helped students who were falling behind. The program greatly improved learning, unlike other ideas like just giving out more textbooks. Her work has led to programs like "Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL)." This program helps primary school students with special lessons in math and reading.
Gender
Duflo has also studied how gender affects how money is used within families. She looked at a policy change in South Africa where old-age pensions increased. She found that when elderly women ("grandmothers") received more pension money, young girls in the household became healthier. This suggests that girls benefit when older female family members control more of the household's money.
Microfinance
Duflo has done important research on microfinance. Microfinance involves giving small loans to people who don't have access to traditional banks. Many people believed microfinance was a great way to end poverty. Duflo and her team worked with a microcredit company in India to test its effects.
They found that microfinance could help some people start businesses or buy things. However, they found little evidence that it caused a big increase in overall spending by families. This research showed that microfinance was not a magic solution for poverty. It led to more studies on microfinance in other places.
Personal Life
Esther Duflo is married to Abhijit Banerjee, who is also a professor at MIT. They have two children. Banerjee was one of her PhD supervisors at MIT in 1999.
Selected Works
Books
In April 2011, Duflo and Banerjee released their book Poor Economics. It shares their 15 years of experience using experiments to fight poverty. The book was highly praised. In 2019, they wrote another book, Good Economics for Hard Times. This book discusses solutions for big problems like inequality, climate change, and globalization.
Papers
Duflo has written many research papers. Most of them have been published in the top economics journals.
Awards
Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences
Esther Duflo, along with Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer, won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2019. They received the award "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty." Duflo was 46 years old, making her the youngest person to win this award. She is also the second woman to receive it.
The Nobel committee noted that their experimental research methods are now very important in the field of development economics. They explained that Duflo and her co-authors found that simply adding more school days or textbooks did not always help students learn. Instead, they argued that efforts to get more children into school must also include changes to make schools better.
When she received the prize, Duflo said she hoped it would "inspire many, many other women to continue working." She also wanted to use the award to help her efforts to fight poverty and improve children's education.
Other Awards
- In 2002, Duflo won the Elaine Bennett Research Prize. This award honors a female economist under 40 who has made great contributions to economic research.
- In 2005, she was named the Best Young French Economist.
- In 2009, she received a MacArthur Foundation Fellow award, sometimes called a "genius" grant.
- In 2010, she won the John Bates Clark Medal. This award is for economists under 40 who have made the most important contributions to economic ideas.
- Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2011.
- In 2014, she won the Infosys Prize for leading a big change in development economics.
- In 2015, she received the Princess of Asturias Social Sciences award in Spain.
- In 2022, Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee received the Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement.
Honours
- She has received high honors from France, including Commandeur of the Legion of Honour and Officier of the National Order of Merit.
Images for kids
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Duflo in 2009
See also
In Spanish: Esther Duflo para niños
