Esther Duflo Quotes

France, Economist
October 25, 1972

Esther Duflo, FBA is a French American economist, Co-Founder and Director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), and Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Duflo is an NBER Research Associate, serves on the board of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD), and is Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research's development economics program.

I've never had a TV in my whole life. Television passed by me.

Esther Duflo
- Television
- Passed
And there is a lot of idiosyncrasy. But there are also regularities and phenomena. And what the data is going to be able to do - if there's enough of it - is uncover, in the mess and the noise of the world, some lines of music that actually have harmony. It's there, somewhere.

Esther Duflo

In technology, we spend so much time experimenting, fine-tuning, getting the absolute cheapest way to do something - so why aren't we doing that with social policy?

Esther Duflo
I don't go to the beach. There is no value in going to the beach. If I did go I would probably read economics books.

Esther Duflo
- Books
- Beach
- Economics
Paternalism is everywhere in our lives. We have to immunise our children unless we are upset about it. In India, it is the opposite. It is possible to get your kids immunised, but you really have to want to.

Esther Duflo
- Children
- Want
- Upset
Giving more to women will, to some extent, come at the expense of men. People sometimes try to sweep that under the rug by saying you will create so much additional resources that everyone will be better off. I don't think that's true.

Esther Duflo
- Women
- True
- Create
What is lacking in India are decent social services. The health service is a disaster. Education is a disaster.

Esther Duflo
- Education
- India
- Disaster
The poor get bored the same as the rest of us. Their happiness might be as important to them as their health.

Esther Duflo
- Health
- Happiness
- Bored

The logic is that when you provide schools or any social service to people, they have no choice. They have to take what you give them, because they don't have the money to pay for schools themselves; that's why you provide schools in the first place.

Esther Duflo
Part of me always wanted to do something useful for the world. It came from my mother. She is a paediatrician and she was active in a small NGO for the child victims of war.

Esther Duflo
- War
- Mother
- Wanted
In a way, it has been an advantage for me to be a woman because there is always some academic committee that needs you to fill a quota!

Esther Duflo
- Woman
- Advantage
- Academic
For millions of girls around the world, motherhood comes too early. Those who bear children as adolescents suffer higher maternal mortality and morbidity rates, and their children are more likely to die in infancy.

Esther Duflo
- Children
- Girls
- Suffer
The differences in income between the poor world and the rich world are so great that people have to be interested.

Esther Duflo