Esther Duflo was the youngest-ever Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences laureate when she won in 2019.
Duflo was 46 years old at the time of the award. She shared the prize with Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty. Their method broke broad development problems into smaller, testable questions and used randomized field experiments to evaluate policies.
Duflo and Banerjee are married and co-founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, commonly known as J-PAL, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The lab supports randomized evaluations of programs in areas such as education, health, and finance.
Duflo became the second woman to receive the economics prize, after Elinor Ostrom in 2009. She was also the youngest economics laureate, a record that distinguishes her from the youngest winners in the other Nobel categories.