- Fellow type
- UK Fellow
- Year of birth
- 1937
- Year of death
- 2023
- Year elected
- 2006
- Sections
- Economics and Economic History
- Website
- http://www.michaellipton.net
Michael Lipton D Litt (1982), CMG (2003), FBA (2006), has worked on economics of agriculture, development, farm technology and employment, rural risk, land, rural-urban relations, nutrition and poverty reduction. He has been based on Sussex University since 1961, together with IDS, the Institute of Development Studies, since 1968 (Professor 1968; now Emeritus). He has researched in India (since working on Myrdal’s Asian Drama team in 1969-61 and in Kawathe village, Maharashtra, in 1965), Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Botswana and South Africa.
He directed IDS’s Village Studies Programme (1972-8), which produced comparative books on migration, labour utilisation and nutrition based on some 3000 primary village surveys. His books include Assessing Economic Performance (1968); Why Poor People Stay Poor: urban bias and world development (1977); New Seeds and Poor People (with Richard Longhurst, 1989); Does Aid Work in India? (with John Toye, 1991); Land Reform: property rights and property wrongs (2010); and (work-in-progress) Malthus in Africa? (2019).
He was Fellow: of All Souls, Oxford (1961-8, 1983-4); Rockefeller (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1962-3) the British Academy (2006) and (Stellenbosch Inst. for Advanced Studies (2011). He has been Employment Adviser, Government of Botswana, 1977-9; Senior Economic.Adviser (poverty analysis), World Bank, 1981-3; Director, Consumption & Nutrition, International Food Policy Research Institute, 1987-9; and Lead Scholar and main author of the International. Fund for Agricultural. Development’s Rural Poverty Report, 1999-2001. He is currently advising the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform, South Africa.
He was awarded the Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought in 2012.
