[E227]Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton’s aid ideas have stirred……

Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton’s aid ideas have stirred controversy

New Nobel economics laureate[得奖者] Angus Deaton[安格斯·迪顿] is an optimist[乐观主义者] about economic progress, but his theory that poor countries’ development could be accelerated by cutting international aid[国际援助] has triggered controversy[引发了争议]. In his 2013 book, “The Great Escape: Health, Wealth and the Origins of Inequality,” Deaton, a professor at Princeton University in the U.S., charts how human welfare[人类福利] has risen enormously over time. But he also says Western countries are wasting money trying to put poor countries on the same path of development they followed themselves.

You cannot talk about consumption and poverty in a serious way without mentioning him.

Philippe Aghion, economist and professor at the College of France

Deaton's ideas on aid remain highly controversial. He argues that health, in particular the fight against malnutrition[营养失调，营养不良], should take precedence[优先；居先] above all else. Improving the health of people in developing countries could be done more cheaply by financing research into diseases or distributing vaccines[疫苗] and food rations[食物配给] directly to the population, he argues. One major critic of Deaton’s theory is Bill Gates, the billionaire Microsoft founder and philanthropist[慈善家]. He has said he admires Deaton but finds his aid argument “very weak” and “strange.”

Deaton and other aid critics look at, say, aid that was designed to prop up[支撑；支持] some American industry, see that it didn’t raise GDP in poor countries, and conclude that aid must be a failure.

Bill Gates