Raj Chetty
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A profile
As in 2021
Ishani Duttagupta, July 26, 2021: The Times of India
From: Ishani Duttagupta, July 26, 2021: The Times of India
Raj Chetty is called one of the most influential economists today, and is seen as a strong contender for the Nobel Prize in economics. He’s also among the more popular professors, and his courses see hundreds of students sign up. More important, at 28, Delhi-born Raj Chetty became one of the youngest tenured faculty in the history of Harvard University’s famous economics department. He’s the William A Ackman Professor of Public Economics at Harvard, and also director of Opportunity Insights, a prestigious research and policy institute, launched by him in 2018.
His research uses big data and economic theory to help design better economic policies. Ever since Covid-19 hit the US, Chetty and his team have been working on the economic impact of the pandemic on the lives of Americans. Just before the presidential elections last year, Chetty and his team briefed then Vice President Joe Biden and his running mate Senator Kamala Harris on job losses and the impact of the pandemic on small businesses.
In an email interview with Ishani Duttagupta, Chetty discusses a range of topics from his Indian roots to using big data to track inequalities in India. Edited excerpts:
Q: Your recent work has focussed a lot on economic revival after the pandemic. Is it entirely America-centric or are you also looking at global economic revival? What are some of the highlights of your work related to post pandemic economic revival?
A: Both within the US and globally, the pandemic has exacerbated inequality across lines including race, class, and gender. Within the US, we’ve seen that lower-income families, women, and families of colour have borne the brunt of the economic and health impacts of the pandemic. Our research shows that when Covid-19 first struck, high-income households reduced their spending dramatically. This set off a sharp downward spiral in economic activity that ultimately led to job and wage losses for low-wage workers in the US and beyond.
Outside of the US, we’ve seen that countries across the global south — including India — have been subject to outsized suffering due to the pandemic. Going forward, my hope is that this once-in-a-generation crisis will highlight the gravity of inequality in our world today and inspire much-needed investments that will help put us on a more equitable and sustainable trajectory going forward.
You became one of the youngest tenured faculty at the Harvard economics department, was that a big challenge?
I think that becoming a professor at any leading institution represents both a big challenge as well as an incredibly rewarding career opportunity. My goal was never to become the youngest tenured professor in the department, but rather to have a chance to work on addressing important social issues. I remain incredibly grateful for the opportunities and recognition I've received so far in my career. It is a privilege to be able to do work I genuinely enjoy that also makes a difference in people's lives.
Is there a glass ceiling for India-born economists in the US?
Certainly achieving tenure at any top institution is quite challenging. I don't think there is a ‘glass ceiling’ for Indian economists per se, but there are, currently, relatively few economists of Indian origin and it would be great to get more of the country's talented youth to consider economics (and science more generally) as a rewarding and important career path. Many youth naturally focus on careers in medicine, engineering, and computer science, but I think people are less aware of how one can do great things and also have a rewarding life pursuing careers in academia and economics/social science.
You have often spoken about your Indian background – being born in Delhi. How has that shaped you as an economist?
My family moved from New Delhi to the US when I was nine. Seeing the stark contrast in poverty and opportunity between the two countries shaped my early interest in understanding and addressing these issues. Living and studying between the US and India allowed me to understand from a young age that while talent is distributed evenly across the population, opportunity tragically is not.
As the founding director of Opportunity Insights, do you plan to do any projects in India? It is said that your goal is to revive the American Dream. Would you consider doing the same for India?
At the moment, I do not have projects planned in India. Due to the nature of the ‘big data’ that our group uses — e.g., anonymised information from tax records — we tend to focus our analyses on the United States, where such data have been most readily available in recent years. That said, many of our findings about the drivers of opportunity are transferable to other settings, including India. For example, I’ve been interested to see parallels between our work and the work of Professors Sam Asher and Paul Novosad [both development economics professors], who are former Harvard students and are doing excellent work on intergenerational mobility and other issues related to inequality in India. I would at some point like to work on projects more directly related to inequality and opportunity in India as a way to give back to my community.
You are seen as one of the most influential economists in the world today and only a matter of time before you get the Nobel Prize for economics – your comments?
I am extremely grateful to be in a position where I have access to resources that allow me to study important issues like equality of opportunity. Seeing our research shape our understanding of — and ultimately, our response to — these issues is what inspires me to continue working on finding solutions that can give more children from around the world the opportunity to succeed.
Your work has been widely recognised and cited; do you see economists becoming more influential in the post-pandemic world where economic recovery will be top of the agenda for countries around the globe?
Yes, I think economists have been influential and will continue to be influential both in directly shaping policies and in shaping the conversation that people have about how to think about the world at a broader level — should we have a capitalist economy; how open should we be to trade; how should we educate our youth; how do we tackle growing problems of inequality, etc.?
Has any of your research been focussed on the Indian American community? Especially the children of Indian American immigrants?
In our paper Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States we study how upward mobility for Asian Americans compares to that of other groups in the US. We find that first generation Asian immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than other demographic subgroups, while levels of upward mobility for Asian Americans whose mothers were born in the US are more comparable to those of white Americans. This suggests that first-generation immigrants have different experiences in terms of upward mobility, but those differences begin to fade over time, perhaps through the process of assimilation into American society.
Your wife, Sundari Chetty, is also of Indian origin. As a family, how Indian are you in food, culture, language etc? Do you visit India often and keep in touch with kin back in India?
Being Indian is an important part of our family’s identity. We speak both Tamil and English at home, and we eat South Indian food every day. Since most of our family now lives in the US, we don’t have the opportunity to visit India as much as we’d like to. That said, we are excited for our young children to spend time growing up there.
Achievements
2013: John Bates Clark Medal
‘Baby Nobel’ for Delhi-born US economist
Chidanand Rajghatta
April 16, 2013
Washington: A young Indian-American economist whose pioneering work on education was cited by President Obama in last year’s State of the Union address has won a prestigious award that is often called the “Baby Nobel”.
Delhi-born Raj Chetty, a professor of economics at Harvard, has been named the 2013 winner of the John Bates Clark Medal, which the American Economic Association awards annually to economists under the age of 40 who make a significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge. Past winners include Paul Krugman, Paul Samuelson, Milton Friedman, Joseph Stiglitz.
2021
From: Ishani Duttagupta, July 26, 2021: The Times of India
See graphic:
Raj Chetty- Achievements as in July 2021
