# Fame.am profile — machine-readable export
# Canonical URL: https://fame.am/person/w-arthur-lewis
# Generated: 2026-08-31T15:48:59.852Z

schema: https://schema.org/Person
url: "https://fame.am/person/w-arthur-lewis"
name: "W. Arthur Lewis"
slug: "w-arthur-lewis"
description: "The only Black economist to win the Nobel Prize, and the architect of a model that explained how poor countries could industrialize by pulling surplus labor out of subsistence farming into factories."
tagline: "Saint Lucian economist (1915–1991)"
image: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/Arthur_Lewis_(1915-1991).jpg"
gender: "male"
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profileType:
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  entityType: "https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q39631"
birthDate: "1915-01-23"
deathDate: "1991-06-15"
livingStatus: "DECEASED"
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# bio (long form, separated for readability)
bio: |
  Born in Saint Lucia on 23 January 1915, Lewis built a career that led him to Princeton, where he became the James Madison Professor of Political Economy. His 1954 paper "Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour" introduced the dual-sector model: a framework showing how economies with vast agricultural populations and surplus labor could fuel industrial growth by shifting workers into a modern capitalist sector. The insight reshaped development economics and earned him the Nobel Memorial Prize, a distinction no other Black economist has claimed. He died on 15 June 1991.