Jean Drèze (born 1959) is a Belgian-born Indian welfare economist, social scientist and activist. He has worked on several developmental issues facing India like social welfare and gender inequality. His co-authors include Nobel laureate in economics Amartya Sen, with whom he has written on famine, Nicholas Stern, with whom he has written on policy reform when market prices are distorted, and Nobel laureate in economics Angus Deaton. He is currently an honorary professor at the Delhi School of Economics, visiting professor at the Department of Economics, Ranchi University, and also the member of Economic Advisory Council to the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu headed by Nobel Laureate Esther Duflo. He was a member of the National Advisory Council of India in both first and second term, but only for a year each time. Early life Jean Drèze was born on 22 January 1959 in the ancient town of Leuven as the son of Jacques Drèze, (founder of the Center for Operations Research and Econometrics at the Université catholique de Louvain). His brother, Xavier Drèze, is a marketing and consumer research scholar. He studied mathematical economics at the University of Essex in the 1980s and did his PhD (theoretical economics of cost-benefit analysis) at the Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi. He has lived in India since 1979 and became an Indian citizen in 2002. Personal life He was based in Delhi (1993 to 2002) and in Allahabad (2002 to 2014). He currently lives in Ranchi. Career Jean Drèze taught at the London School of Economics in the 1980s, his only full-time post, and at the Delhi School of Economics, and had been Visiting Professor at the G.B. Pant Social Science Institute, Allahabad. Presently, he is an Honorary Chair Professor of the "Planning and Development Unit" created by the Planning Commission, Government of India, in the Department of Economics, University of Allahabad, India. He has made wide-ranging contributions to development economics and public economics, with special reference to India. He has worked on many issues relating to development economics including hunger, famine, education, gender inequality, childcare, school feeding, employment guarantee etc. His works combine standard economic methods (such as his articles relating to poverty in India) and tools that are used more commonly by anthropologists (such as his work on the village of Palanpur, Moradabad District, Uttar Pradesh, India with Nicholas Stern, Peter Lanjouw and others, which included him living for a