Abstract
Behavioral economist Raj Chetty studies education issues as they relate to social mobility and long-term student outcomes. His most famous educational work examined the long-term effects of teacher value-added on students. His research team found that high-value-added teachers produced long-term benefits for their students. Chetty’s capacity for designing innovative quasiexperiments and drawing on big data has positioned him as one of the foremost econometricians of his era, allowing him to push the field to grapple with questions of socioeconomic mobility in the United States. His work has been revelatory in an era of widening inequalities, concerns over intergenerational mobility, and a reckoning over racial gaps and discrimination. Chetty’s work on mobility created a highly-publicized mobility report card for colleges and universities rating them on their record on propelling students from the lowest to the highest income quintiles. His work has revolutionized education policy and economic research.
Notes
- 1.
This chapter will cite the National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 17,699 titled “The Long-Term Impacts of Teachers: Teacher Value-Added and Student Outcomes in Adulthood.” This paper was subsequently broken up into two papers and published in the American Economic Review as “Measuring the Impacts of Teachers I: Evaluating Bias in Teacher Value-Added Estimates” (Chetty, Friedman, & Rockoff, 2014a) and “Measuring the Impacts of Teachers II: Teacher Value-Added amp; Student Outcomes in Adulthood (Chetty, Friedman Rockoff, 2014b).” The NBER paper is the same material as that published in the AER.
References
Bacher-Hicks, A., Kane, T. J., & Staiger, D. O. (2014). Validating teacher effect estimates using changes in teacher assignments in Los Angeles (Working paper no. 20657) (pp. 1–41). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w20657
Chetty, R. (2015). Behavioral economics and public policy: A pragmatic perspective. American Economic Review, 105(5), 1–33.
Chetty, R. (2016). Socioeconomic mobility in the United States: New evidence and policy lessons. In S. M. Wachter & L. Ding (Eds.), Shared prosperity in America’s communities (pp. 7–19). University of Pennsylvania Press.
Chetty, R., & Friedman, J. N. (2010). Does local tax financing of public schools perpetuate inequality? Proceedings. Annual Conference on Taxation and Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the National Tax Association, 103, 112–118.
Chetty, R., Looney, A., & Kroft, K. (2009). Salience and taxation: Theory and evidence. American Economic Review, 99(4), 1145–1177.
Chetty, R., Friedman, J. N., Hilger, N., Saez, E., Schanzenbach, D. W., & Yagan, D. (2011). How does your kindergarten classroom affect your earnings? Evidence from project star. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 126(4), 1593–1660.
Chetty, R., Friedman, J., & Rockoff, J. (2011). The long-term impacts of teachers: Teacher value-added and student outcomes in adulthood (Working paper no. 17699) (pp. 1–59). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w17699
Chetty, R., Hendren, N., Kline, P., & Saez, E. (2014). Where is the land of opportunity? The geography of intergenerational mobility in the United States. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 129(4), 1553–1623.
Chetty, R., Friedman, J. N., & Rockoff, J. E. (2014a). Measuring the impacts of teachers I: Evaluating bias in teacher value-added estimates. American Economic Review, 104(9), 2593–2632.
Chetty, R., Friedman, J. N., & Rockoff, J. E. (2014b). Measuring the impacts of teachers II: Teacher value-added and student outcomes in adulthood. American Economic Review, 104(9), 2633–2679.
Chetty, R., Friedman, J., & Rockoff, J. (2014c). Discussion of the American Statistical Association’s statement (2014) on using value-added models for educational assessment. Statistics and Public Policy, 1(1), 111–113.
Chetty, R., Hendren, N., & Katz, L. F. (2016). The effects of exposure to better neighborhoods on children: New evidence from the moving to opportunity experiment. The American Economic Review, 106(4), 85.
Chetty, R., Friedman, J. N., & Rockoff, J. E. (2017). Measuring the impacts of teachers: Reply. American Economic Review, 107(6), 1685–1717.
Chetty, R., Friedman, J., Saez, E., Turner, N., & Yagan, D. (2017). Mobility report cards: The role of colleges in intergenerational mobility (Working paper no. 23618) (pp. 1–61). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w23618
Chetty, R., Hendren, N., Jones, M. R., & Porter, S. R. (2020). Race and economic opportunity in the United States: An intergenerational perspective. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 135(2), 711–783.
Clement, D. (2014, December). Raj Chetty. The Region-The Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, 28(4), 10–24.
Cook, G. (2019). Raj Chetty’s American dream: The economist whose work dispelled the myth of social mobility in the U.S. has a plan to make it a reality. The Atlantic, 64–71.
Darling-Hammond, L., Amrein-Beardsley, A., Haertel, E., & Rothstein, J. (2012). Evaluating teacher evaluation: Popular modes of evaluating teachers are fraught with inaccuracies and inconsistencies, but the field has identified better approaches. Phi Delta Kappan, 93(6), 8.
Davis, B. (2015, October 21). Economist Raj Chetty’s proposals on inequality draw interest on both sides of the political aisle: Plans for increasing upward mobility appeal to democrats and republicans alike in presidential campaign. Wall Street Journal.
Feldstein, M. (2014). Raj Chetty: 2013 Clark medal recipient. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 28(2), 143–152.
Irwin, N. (2015, September 13). The star rising in the west: Stanford is challenging Harvard and M.I.T. to lure the top economists. New York Times, BU1.
Pais, A. J. (2012, October 11). A Professor at 23, he has won a $500,000 “Genius Grant”. Rediff News.
Romano, R. M., & Eddy, P. L. (2017). Community colleges and social mobility. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 49(6), 55–62.
Rothstein, J. (2017). Measuring the impacts of teachers: Comment. American Economic Review, 107(6), 1656–1684.
Scheiber, N. (2007, April 2). Freaks and geeks: How Freakonomics is ruining the dismal science. The New Republic, 236(13).
Schwartz, N. D. (2016, January 4). Economists take aim at wealth inequality. New York Times, B1.
Further Reading
Akee, R., Jones, M. R., & Porter, S. R. (2017). Race matters: Income shares, income inequality, and income mobility for all U.S. races (Working paper no. 23733). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w23733
Bacher-Hicks, A., Kane, T. J., & Staiger, D. O. (2014). Validating teacher effect estimates using changes in teacher assignments in Los Angeles (Working paper no. 20657) (pp. 1–41). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w20657
Baker, E. L., Barton, P. E., Darling-Hammond, L., Haertel, E., Ladd, H. F., Linn, R. L., Ravtich, D., Rothstein, R., Shavelson, R. J., & Shepard, L. A. (2010). Problems with the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers (Briefing paper no. 278. Economic Policy Institute.
Chetty, R., Friedman, J. N., & Rockoff, J. (2016). Using lagged outcomes to evaluate bias in value-added models. American Economic Review, 106(5), 393–399.
Chetty, R., & Hendren, N. (2018a). The impacts of neighborhoods on intergenerational mobility I: Childhood exposure effects. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 133(3), 1107–1162.
Chetty, R., & Hendren, N. (2018b). The impacts of neighborhoods on intergenerational mobility II: County-level estimates. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 133(3), 1163–1228.
Chetty, R., Hendren, N., Kline, P., Saez, E., & Turner, N. (2014). Is the United States still a land of opportunity?: Recent trends in intergenerational mobility. American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, 104(5), 141–147.
Congdon, W. J., Kling, J. R., & Mullainathan, S. (2011). Policy and choice: Public finance through the lens of behavioral economics. Brookings Institution Press.
Corcoran, S. P. (2010). Can teachers be evaluated by their students’ test scores? Should they be?: The use of value-added measures of teacher effectiveness in policy and practice (Education policy for action series). Report for the Annenberg Institute for School Reform.
Dee, T. S., & West, M. (2011). The non-cognitive returns to class size. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 33(1), 23–46.
Deming, D. (2009). Early childhood intervention and life-cycle skill development: Evidence from head start. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 1(3), 111–134.
Deming, D., & Dynarski, S. (2010). Into college, out of poverty?: Policies to increase the post-secondary attainment of the poor. University of Chicago Press.
Duncan, G. J., & Murnane, R. J. (Eds.). (2011). Whither opportunity: Rising inequality, schools, and children’s life chances. Russell Sage Foundation.
Fryer, R. G., & Katz, L. F. (2013). Achieving escape velocity: Neighborhood and school interventions to reduce persistent inequality. American Economic Review, 103(3), 232–237.
Goldhaber, D., & Chaplin, D. D. (2015). “Assessing the Rothstein falsification test”: Does it really show teacher value-added models are biased? Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 8(1), 8–34.
Hanushek, E. A. (1971). Teacher characteristics and gains in student achievement: Estimation using micro data. American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, 61(2), 280–288.
Hanushek, E. A. (2011). The economic value of higher teacher quality. Economics of Education Review, 30, 466–479.
Hoekstra, M. (2009). The effect of attending the flagship state university on earnings: A discontinuity-based approach. Review of Economics and Statistics, 91(4), 717–724.
Hoxby, C. M. (2015). Computing the value-added of American postsecondary institutions (Working paper). Internal Revenue Service Statistics of Income Division.
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47(2), 263–292.
Kane, T. J., McCaffrey, D. F., Miller, T., & Staiger, D. O. (2013). Have we identified effective teachers? Validating measures of effective teaching using random assignment. .
Kane, T. J., & Staiger, D. O. (2008). Estimating teacher impacts on student achievement: An experimental evaluation (Working paper no. 14607). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w14607
Kling, J. R., Liebman, J. B., & Katz, L. F. (2007). Experimental analysis of neighborhood effects. Econometrica, 75(1), 83–119.
Krueger, A. (2012, January 12). The rise and consequences of inequality in the United States [Speech at the Center for American Progress].
Madrian, B. C. (2014). Applying insights from behavioral economics to policy design. Annual Review of Economics, 6(1), 663–688.
Mazumder, B. (2014). Black-white differences in intergenerational economic mobility in the United States. Economic Perspectives, 38(1), 1–18.
Nolan, B., Salverda, W., & Smeeding, T. M. (Eds.). (2011). The Oxford handbook of economic inequality. Oxford University Press.
Piketty, T., & Saez, E. (2003). Income inequality in the United States, 1913-1998. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118(1), 1–39.
Putnam, R. D. (1995). Bowling alone: America’s declining social capital. Journal of Democracy, 6(1), 65–78.
Rivkin, S. G., Hanushek, E. A., & Kain, J. F. (2005). Teachers, schools and academic achievement. Econometrica, 73, 417–458.
Rockoff, J. E. (2004). The impact of individual teachers on student achievement: Evidence from panel data. American Economic Review, 94(2), 247–252.
Rothstein, J. (2009). Student sorting and bias in value-added estimation: Selection on observables and unobservables. Education Finance and Policy, 4(4), 537–571.
Rothstein, J. (2010). Teacher quality in educational production: Tracking, decay, and student achievement. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 125(1), 175–214.
Simon, H. A. (1955). A behavioral model of rational choice. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 69(1), 99–118.
Solon, G. (1992). Intergenerational income mobility in the United States. American Economic Review, 82(3), 393–408.
Thaler, R. (1980). Toward a positive theory of consumer choice. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 1(1), 39–60.
Thaler, R. H., & Sunstein, C. R. (2003). Libertarian paternalism. American Economic Review, 93(2), 175–179.
Thaler, R. H., & Sunstein, C. R. (2008). Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness. Penguin Books.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
McLeod, A. (2023). Raj Chetty. In: Geier, B.A. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Educational Thinkers . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81037-5_130-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81037-5_130-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-81037-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-81037-5
eBook Packages: Springer Reference EducationReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Education