Thomas Piketty facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Thomas Piketty
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Piketty in 2015
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| Born | 7 May 1971 Clichy, France
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| Spouse(s) |
Julia Cagé
(m. 2014) |
| Institutions | Paris School of Economics School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences London School of Economics Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Field | Public economics, economic history |
| Doctoral advisor |
Roger Guesnerie |
| Influences | Simon Kuznets, Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes, Anthony Atkinson, Kenneth Pomeranz, Amartya Sen, Julia Cagé, Lucas Chancel, Camille Landais, Emmanuel Saez, John Rawls, Emile Durkheim, Leon Bourgeois |
| Awards | Honorary Doctorate, Clarivate Citation Laureates (2023) University of Johannesburg (2015) Medalla Rectoral, Universidad de Chile (2015) Yrjö Jahnsson Award (2013) Prix du meilleur jeune économiste de France (2002) |
| Information at IDEAS / RePEc | |
Thomas Piketty, born on May 7, 1971, is a famous French economist. He teaches economics at several important universities, including the Paris School of Economics and the London School of Economics. Professor Piketty studies how money and wealth are shared among people. He looks at why some people have a lot of money and others have less.
His most famous book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (published in 2013), explores how wealth has been distributed over the last 250 years. He suggests that if we don't make changes, the gap between the rich and everyone else might grow even bigger. Piketty believes that better education and sharing knowledge can help reduce this inequality. He also wrote Capital and Ideology (2019) and A Brief History of Equality (2022), which explain his ideas in simpler ways for everyone.
Contents
Growing Up and Learning
Thomas Piketty grew up in Clichy, a town near Paris, France. When he was 18, he started studying mathematics and economics at a top school called the École Normale Supérieure. He was a very bright student. By the age of 22, he earned his PhD, which is a very advanced degree. His research for his PhD was about how wealth is shared among people. He even won an award for his excellent work!
A Career in Economics
After finishing his PhD, Piketty taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States. Later, he returned to France to work as a researcher and then became a professor. In 2002, he received an award for being the best young economist in France.
Piketty helped start the Paris School of Economics in 2006. He also advised political leaders on economic issues. He writes articles for French newspapers like Libération and Le Monde, sharing his ideas with a wider audience.
In 2013, he won the Yrjö Jahnsson Award, a major prize for economists under 45 in Europe. He also received an honorary doctorate from the University of Johannesburg in 2015. Piketty joined the London School of Economics (LSE) as a professor in 2015. He continues his important research there, focusing on wealth inequality.
Studying Economic Fairness
Professor Piketty is an expert in economic inequality. This means he studies how wealth and income are spread out among people. He looks at history and uses lots of data to understand how much money people have saved and how economies have grown over the last 200 years.
He uses old tax records to see how the richest people have gained wealth. His research shows that wealth tends to become more concentrated over time. In his book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, he suggests that this problem won't fix itself. He proposes ideas like a global tax on wealth to help share money more fairly.
How Incomes Changed Over Time
Piketty's early research looked at high incomes in France during the 20th century. He used tax information to see how much money the wealthiest people earned. This work helped him write his famous book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. He found that in some years, a small group of very rich people earned more than half of all the money in the country.
Why Inequality Changed in France
Piketty discovered that the gap between rich and poor in France became much smaller after World War II. He believes this happened because of a special kind of tax called a progressive income tax. This tax meant that wealthier people paid a larger percentage of their income in taxes. This reduced how much extra money the richest families could save, which helped to make wealth more evenly spread out. He warns that if taxes on the wealthy are lowered, it could lead to a few families controlling most of the country's wealth again.
Comparing Countries
Piketty also compared wealth inequality in different countries. Working with other economists, he found that after World War II, many countries saw less inequality. However, in English-speaking countries, inequality started to grow again in recent decades.
Understanding Wealth Trends
Piketty's work builds on ideas from an earlier economist named Simon Kuznets. Kuznets thought that inequality would naturally decrease as countries developed. But Piketty's research suggests that this isn't always true. He found that changes in taxes and other policies, not just economic growth, played a big role in reducing inequality in the past. He shows that without careful policies, inequality can easily increase again.
Other Research Areas
Besides his main work on wealth, Piketty has also studied other topics. For example, he looked at how differences between schools can cause lasting inequalities in jobs and wages. He has also suggested ways to improve pension and tax systems in France.
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
His book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, published in 2013, looks at how wealth and income have been shared in Europe and the US since the 1700s. The main idea is that inequality is a natural part of capitalism. He argues that governments need to step in to make things fairer, or else our democratic way of life could be at risk. The book became a bestseller and suggested a global tax on wealth as a solution. He received the British Academy Medal for this book in 2014.
Capital and Ideology
In 2019, Piketty published Capital and Ideology. This book continues his work on income and wealth inequality. He explores how different societies throughout history have created ideas to justify why some people have more wealth than others. He argues that a better quality of life for everyone came from social movements and protests, not just from protecting private property. The book also suggests ways to reduce inequality, like a wealth tax.
A Brief History of Equality
His 2022 book, A Brief History of Equality, is a shorter version of his ideas. It's written for everyone, not just economists. In this book, he traces the history of how equality has changed from 1780 to 2020.
Personal Life
Thomas Piketty is married to fellow economist Julia Cagé.
Personal Views
In November 2023, Piketty spoke about fighting climate change. He suggested banning private jets and creating a special tax on carbon emissions. He believes this is important because the richest people often produce the most carbon pollution.
Selected Works and Publications
In French
- Les hauts revenus en France au XXème siècle, Inégalités et redistribution, 1901–1998 (ed. Grasset, September 2001)
- L'économie des inégalités (ed. La Découverte, April 2004)
- Vive la gauche américaine ! : Chroniques 1998–2004 (Éditions de l'Aube, September 2004)
- Pour un nouveau système de retraite : Des comptes individuels de cotisations financés par répartition (Éditions Rue d'Ulm/CEPREMAP, 2008) with Antoine Bozio
- Pour une révolution fiscale (ed. Le Seuil, 2011) with Emmanuel Saez and Camille Landais
- Peut-on sauver l'Europe ? Chroniques 2004–2012 (Les Liens qui Libèrent, 2012)
- Le Capital au XXIe siècle (Seuil, 2013)
- Capital et idéologie (Seuil, 2019)
- Une brève histoire de l'égalité, Paris: Ed. du Seuil, 2021, 350p.
- Vers le socialisme écologique: Chroniques 2020-2024 (Seuil, 2024)
In English
- Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014)
- About Capital in the Twenty-First Century (AER, 2015)
- Carbon and Inequality: From Kyoto to Paris: Trends in the global inequality of carbon emissions (1998-2013) & prospects for an equitable adaptation fund (Lucas Chancel, T. Piketty, Paris School of Economics, 2015)
- Chronicles: On Our Troubled Times (Viking, 2016)
- Why Save the Bankers? And Other Essays on Our Economic and Political Crisis (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016)
- Top Incomes in France in the Twentieth Century: Inequality and Redistribution, 1901–1998 (Harvard University Press, 2018)
- Capital and Ideology (Harvard University Press, 2020)
- Time for Socialism: Dispatches from a World on Fire, 2016-2021 (Yale University Press, 2021)
- "The western elite is preventing us from going after the assets of Russia's hyper-rich" (The Guardian, 16 March 2022).
- A Brief History of Equality, Harvard University Press, 2022, 274p. Data,
- Equality Is a Struggle: Bulletins from the Front Line, 2021-2025, Yale University Press, 2025
See also
In Spanish: Thomas Piketty para niños
