Who Was Vilfredo Pareto?

Vilfredo Pareto was Italian economist and sociologist who unleashed fascism in Italy. He was born in Paris to an exiled Italian family in the year 1848. The family returned to Italy in 1858 and Pareto was educated at the University of Turin. The lad found career in engineering and went on to become a director of a large Italian railway organisation.

Pareto used to teach at the University of Lussane from 1893. The year 1906 was a landmark year not only for him but for people who have introduced the Pareto Optimum which emphasised that a society's resources are not optimally distributed as long as it can make at least one person financially better, while keeping others as wealthy as before. In the same year, he propounded that 20 percent of population owned 80 percent of the property in Italy. The theory was put to general use by Joseph Juran, an American industrial engineer and philanthropist, as the Pareto principle.

The 80-20 principle or the Pareto Principle is now widely acclaimed as the success mantra for any organisation or individual. In the parlance of time management, one can say that 80 percent of the result is achieved from 20 percent of the time used properly. The Pareto distribution also stems from the Pareto Principle which states that 20 percent of the population owns 80 percent of the wealth in the world. Remembered the world over for the 80-20 rule, Vilfredo Pareto died in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1923.

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