A Nobel winner’s advice to Latin America

(Photo: Mel Evans – AP)

When I interviewed the 2015 Nobel Prize winner in economics Angus Deaton a few days ago, I asked him a simple question: “If you had to give one piece of advice to Latin American countries, what would it be?” He answered it in four words: “Improve your data systems.”

Indeed, the 69-year-old Scottish-American Princeton University professor, who is best known for his studies on how to measure poverty, says that Latin America has some of the most unreliable poverty statistics in the world.

Countries should spend more money to improve their statistical systems and adopt the world’s best practices for measuring poverty because in order to pursue good public policies you need to have a good picture of reality, he said.

“One of the problems in Latin America is that most of the surveys ask people about their incomes, and that’s not as good as asking people about their consumption, or how much they spend, ” Deaton told me.

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