Everything about Vilfredo Pareto totally explained
Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto (;
July 15,
1848,
Paris –
August 19,
1923,
Geneva) was an
Italian sociologist,
economist, and
philosopher. He made several important contributions especially in the study of income distribution and in the analysis of individuals' choices. He introduced the concept of
Pareto efficiency and helped develop the field of
microeconomics.
Brief biography
Vilfredo Pareto (originally:
Wilfried Fritz Pareto) was born of an exiled
noble family in 1848 in
Paris, the centre of the popular revolutions of that year. His father, Raffaele Pareto (1812–1882), was an Italian civil engineer, his mother, Marie Metenier, a French woman. His family moved to Italy in 1858. In his childhood, Pareto lived in a middle-class environment, receiving a high standard of education. In 1867 he earned a degree in mathematical sciences and in 1870 a doctorate in engineering from what is now the
Polytechnic University of Turin. His dissertation was entitled "The Fundamental Principles of Equilibrium in Solid Bodies". His later interest in
equilibrium analysis in economics and sociology can be traced back to this paper.
For some years after graduation, he worked as a civil engineer, first for the state-owned Italian Railway Company and later in private industry. Meanwhile, he became increasingly interested in social and economic problems. In 1886 he became a lecturer on economics and management at the
University of Florence. His stay in Florence was marked by political activity, much of it fuelled by his own frustrations with government regulators. In 1889, after the death of his parents, Pareto changed his lifestyle, quitting his job and marrying a Russian, Alessandrina Bakunin. He began writing numerous polemical articles against the government, which caused him much trouble.
In 1893 he was appointed a lecturer in economics at the
University of Lausanne in
Switzerland where he remained for the rest of his life. In 1906 he made the famous observation that twenty percent of the population owned eighty percent of the property in Italy, later generalised by
Joseph M. Juran and others into the so-called
Pareto principle (also termed the
80-20 rule) and generalised further to the concept of a
Pareto distribution.
He died in
Geneva,
Switzerland, in 1923.
Economic rules
A few economic rules are based on his work :
More biography, Pareto's works, and legacy
In his
Trattato di Sociologia Generale (1916, rev. French trans. 1917) published in English under the title
The Mind and Society (1935), he put forward the first
social cycle theory in sociology.
He is famous for saying "history is a graveyard of aristocracies".
A great deal of
Talcott Parsons' theory of society is based on Pareto's works. Parsons aimed at a
sociology canon made of
Durkheim,
Weber, and Pareto.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Vilfredo Pareto'.
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