Raj Chetty

Raj Chetty was born in 1979 in New Delhi, India, and moved to the United States with his family as a child. He grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he attended the University School of Milwaukee. Chetty showed early academic promise, graduating from Harvard University summa cum laude in 2000 with a bachelor's degree in economics. He then pursued graduate studies at MIT, earning his Ph.D. in economics in 2003 at the age of 24. His doctoral dissertation, supervised by James Poterba, focused on consumption and savings behavior, laying the groundwork for his later work on economic mobility.

Chetty's career has been marked by a series of influential appointments. He joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2003, where he remained until 2015, when he moved to Harvard University as a professor of economics. His research has reshaped the study of economic opportunity. Using de-identified tax records and other administrative data, Chetty and his collaborators developed the Opportunity Atlas, a tool that maps intergenerational mobility across neighborhoods in the United States. His work has shown that the “American Dream” varies dramatically by geography and that factors such as school quality, segregation, and social capital play crucial roles. Chetty's studies on teacher value-added and the effects of early childhood interventions have also influenced education policy.

Beyond academia, Chetty has actively engaged with policymakers and the public. He served as a senior advisor to the U.S. Department of the Treasury from 2009 to 2010, during the Obama administration, contributing to the design of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. He co-founded Opportunity Insights, a research and policy institute at Harvard that translates his findings into actionable tools for local governments and nonprofits. Chetty's work has been cited in congressional testimony and has informed debates on topics ranging from the earned income tax credit to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on educational inequality. His ability to communicate complex findings to broad audiences has made him a prominent figure in public economics.

While Chetty is widely known for his mobility research, several lesser-known facets of his career are notable. He has published influential papers on the economics of happiness, showing that income inequality affects subjective well-being. He also explored the impact of the 2008 financial crisis on consumer spending, using data from credit card transactions. Chetty has been a vocal advocate for open data, making his research datasets publicly available to encourage replication. He has received numerous honors, including the John Bates Clark Medal in 2013, often considered the second most prestigious award in economics after the Nobel. In 2022, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, a rare distinction for an economist. His early work on unemployment insurance and job search behavior remains a cornerstone of labor economics.

Intergenerational mobility

The extent to which children's economic outcomes differ from their parents'.

Natural experiment

A study that exploits a real-world event or policy change to estimate causal effects.

Administrative data

Data collected by government agencies for administrative purposes, such as tax records.