Michael Lipton FBA (born 1937) is an economist specialising in rural poverty in developing countries, including issues relating to land reform and urban bias. He has spent much of his career at the University of Sussex, but also contributed to the work of international institutions, such as the World Bank's 2000/2001 World Development Report on poverty. He was Reader, then Professorial Fellow, at the University's Institute of Development Studies 1967–94, and since 1994 he has been Research Professor at Sussex University's Poverty Research Unit, which he founded.Lipton was elected to the British Academy in 2006.
Noted theatre actor, both on and off-Broadway, on stage from 1949. Best known on screen for his leading roles in daytime soap operas As the World Turns (1956) and Somerset (1970). Also occasionally guested on other shows, notably as the outrageously camp interior decorator Helasco in 'The Mad Home Wrecker' episode of I Dream of Jeannie (1965).