Simon Kuznets

Facts

Simon Kuznets

Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.

Simon Kuznets
The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1971

Born: 30 April 1901, Pinsk, Russian Empire (now Belarus)

Died: 8 July 1985, Cambridge, MA, USA

Affiliation at the time of the award: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

Prize motivation: “for his empirically founded interpretation of economic growth which has led to new and deepened insight into the economic and social structure and process of development”

Prize share: 1/1

Life

Simon Kuznets was born in Pinsk in what is now Belarus, but he received his basic education in Kharkov in present-day Ukraine. In 1922 the family emigrated to the U.S. Four years later he had earned bachelor’s, master’s and doctor’s degrees at Columbia University. His instructor at Columbia, Wesley Mitchell, founded the National Bureau of Economic Research, with which Kuznets was affiliated for more than 30 years, beginning in 1927. This was also where he met his future wife, Edith; they married in 1927 and had two children.

Work

Simon Kuznets is best known to the public for the Kuznets curve, which describes the relationship between economic growth and inequality. However, these theories are of a later date. His prize was awarded for his earlier work with growth and the economy’s size. He developed methods for calculating the size of a nation’s income and changes in it and standardized the concept of gross national product (GNP). Kuznets also analyzed swings in the economy’s growth rate over long periods and how these were connected with population growth.

To cite this section
MLA style: Simon Kuznets – Facts. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2023. Sun. 10 Dec 2023. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1971/kuznets/facts/>

Back to top Back To Top Takes users back to the top of the page

Streams during Nobel Week

Watch the 2023 Nobel Prize lectures, the Nobel Prize Concert, Nobel Week Dialogue, the prize award ceremonies in Oslo and Stockholm and Nobel Peace Prize Forum here at nobelprize.org.
Watch lectures and award ceremonies

Explore prizes and laureates

Look for popular awards and laureates in different fields, and discover the history of the Nobel Prize.