Children's chances of earning more than their parents have fallen from 90% to 50% over the past half century in America. How can we restore the American Dream of upward mobility for our children? In this talk, Raj Chetty will discuss recent work that he and his colleagues at the Equality of Opportunity Project (link is external) have done to study this question. Among other topics, the talk will show how children’s chances of climbing the income ladder vary across neighborhoods, analyze the sources of racial disparities in intergenerational mobility, and discuss the role of higher education in creating greater income mobility. The talk will conclude by discussing how local policymakers can harness big data to increase opportunity in their own communities and institutions.

Raj Chetty is a Professor of Economics at Stanford University. Chetty's research combines empirical evidence and economic theory to help design more effective government policies. His work on tax policy, unemployment insurance, and education has been widely cited in media outlets and Congressional testimony. His current research (link is external) focuses on equality of opportunity: how can we give children from disadvantaged backgrounds better chances of succeeding?

Chetty is a recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship and the John Bates Clark medal, given by the American Economic Association to the best American economist under age 40. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2003 at the age of 23 and was a professor at UC-Berkeley until 2009, when he returned to Harvard as one of the youngest tenured professors in Harvard's history. Chetty moved to the Department of Economics at Stanford in 2015.

This event is hosted by the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and co-sponsored by the Office of Tax Policy Research, The Inequality Lab, Survey Research Center, Education Policy Initiative, and Poverty Solutions.

Free and open to the public.
Video will be available after the event.