Angus Deaton Quotes

One could look over the past century and ask oneself, has the increased longevity been good, bad or indifferent?

In 1900 Americans on average lived for only 49 years and most working people died still on the job.

In one century, we've added 28 years to our average life span - a change so rapid that our brains couldn't possibly have evolved to accommodate it.

The reduction of the death rate is the principal statistical expression and index of human social progress.

In 1955, Cuba had a life expectancy of 59.5 years, shorter than Paraguay, Argentina, and Uruguay… In 1985 the average Cuban could expect to live until the age of 75, longer than anyone else in Latin America and just short of the average American (75.9 years). Cuba’s children were the best fed and the level of literacy was the highest [in Latin America].

We are living on average today 34 years longer than our great-grandparents did.

With longer life spans and better health and education, many feel that giving birth to a baby a mere couple of decades after they themselves were in the cradle is a little premature.

Cancer is, in general, an increasingly important topic, in part because we've gotten so good at preventing other forms of death that cancer, despite some gains made against it, is becoming even more prominent.

The thing about living in the 21st century is you can get to fortysomething and not have anyone major in your life die.

Research shows that when women are empowered as political leaders, countries often experience higher standards of living with positive developments in education, infrastructure, and health care.

If you can't educate your citizens and you can't keep them healthy, you can't begin to be a society.

A country in which the people are not healthy physically and psychologically, are poorly educated and illiterate, will never rise to the peaks of world civilization.

Health care is, at its core, about improving the odds of life in its struggle against death. Of extending that game which we will all lose, each and every one of us unto eternity, extending it another year or month or second.

The IQ and the life expectancy of the average American recently passed each other in opposite directions.

Medical statistics will be our standard of measurement: we will weigh life for life and see where the dead lie thicker, among the workers or among the privileged

The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops,—no, but the kind of man the country turns out.

People who died could not come back to life, so guaranteeing the right to life should not be a thing of the future, but should be advancing right now.

The object sought to be accomplished is the improvement of the condition of man. The mode by which it is to be accomplished is that of increasing his productive power. The more food a man can raise, the more and better food may he consume, and the larger will be the surplus that can be appropriated to the purchase of clothing, to the education of his family, to the enlargement of his house, or to the improvement of his machinery, and the greater will be the amount of leisure that can be appropriated to the improvement of his modes of thought.

States and nations do not build wealth by storing cash in a bank vault. They build wealth by expanding human solutions to human problems in order that more and more of her people — living and yet to be born — are able to enjoy a higher quality of life.

You never think about your own mortality. At least not until your back gives way when you're 40.

Being an American is life-threatening. For various reasons, men and women here don't live as long as men and women in about two dozen other countries, including the ones we defeated in World War II - Japan, Germany and Italy.

Growth is not an objective in itself; we should be concerned with standards of living.

When you help make people healthier, it makes the nation healthier; it makes the world healthier. It makes the economy healthier.

No one should die when they're 50.

We were never supposed to live until 40. We were built to self-destruct at 30, whether from cancer or mental illness. We're all going way beyond our expiration date.