Practice modes
Languages & Literature
Pakistan
World & History
Contributions to welfare economics, including work on famines, poverty and inequality
Sen showed that famines, such as the 1943 Bengal famine, can happen even when there is enough food, because poor people lose the means to buy it. He developed better ways to measure poverty and inequality, and the 'capability approach': development means expanding people's real freedoms.
Economist and philosopher born in Santiniketan, Bengal, who has taught at Cambridge and Harvard.