‘Your money and your life’: no need to trade off saving lives from coronavirus and economic recovery

Angus Deaton, who won the Nobel Prize for economics, says there is no evidence lockdowns to control the spread of the virus would save lives at a huge cost to the economy

China posted an economic growth rate of 2.3 per cent last year, and is set to be the only major economy to have achieved that result in a coronavirus-ravaged 2020

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Angus Deaton, who won the Nobel Prize for economics in 2015. Photo:

Published: 8:15pm, 28 Jan 2021Updated: 10:31pm, 28 Jan 2021

Economic growth can only be achieved by first stopping deaths from the coronavirus, although China’s success in achieving this last year led to an increase in global inequality, according to a Nobel Prize-winning economist.

China posted an economic growth rate of 2.3 per cent last year, and is set to be the only major economy to have achieved that result in a coronavirus-ravaged 2020.

At the start of the pandemic, it was suggested that lockdowns to control the spread of the virus would save lives at a huge cost to the economy, while it was also believed that there would be higher death rates in lower-income countries that did not have the resources to deal with medical emergencies.

But while the reasons behind the high death tolls in developed countries are multifaceted, including the perceived mishandling of the virus by the Trump administration in the United States, it also shows a strong relation with income loss during the pandemic, according to Angus Deaton, who won the Nobel Prize for economics in 2015.

The route to growth lies through stopping deaths. It is not a matter of your money or your life, but your money and your life

Angus Deaton

“There is no evidence in these data for the existence of any such trade-off. Instead, the route to growth lies through stopping deaths. It is not a matter of your money or your life, but your money and your life,” said Princeton University professor Deaton in a paper published this month.

“China’s exceptional positive growth in 2020 actually contributed to an increase in global inequality because China is so rich relative to most of the world.”

Deaton also found that per capita incomes fell more in countries with higher per capita incomes compared to poorer ones, based on economic forecasts from the International Monetary Fund in 2019 and late 2020, when ignoring population size.