Esther Duflo was 46 years old when she received the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Duflo was born on 25 October 1972 and was awarded the prize in 2019. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences recognized her work with Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer on alleviating global poverty, particularly through experimental approaches in development economics.
Her research helped popularize randomized controlled trials for evaluating anti-poverty policies. Instead of asking only whether a program appears successful, researchers can compare outcomes for similar groups that did and did not receive an intervention.
Duflo is often described as the youngest economics laureate in the prize’s history. The award also made her the second woman to win the economics prize, after Elinor Ostrom in 2009, and the first woman to share it with another woman, since she and no other woman shared the 2019 award.