Indian-American Economist Raj Chetty awarded top Harvard University prize

Raj Chetty is a professor of Economics at Harvard University. (Image credit: Opportunity Insights)

Indian-American economist Raj Chetty has been awarded Harward University's coveted George Ledlie Prize for wielding big data to break myths about who achieves the American Dream and the obstacles faced by others.

Chetty, a professor of Economics at Harvard University is also director of Opportunity Insights, a group of economists based at Harvard who study inequality. He had also advised US President Joe Biden on economic issues.

Harward University Provost and Chief Academic Officer Alan M. Garber said that Chetty's groundbreaking work on economic mobility and his efforts to share this data with policymakers are making the American Dream more accessible to all.

The award is bestowed every two years to a member of the Harvard community who has made the most valuable contribution to science, or in any way for the benefit of mankind, the university said on August 9 in a press release.

Raj Chetty said he became interested in this work because of his own background coming to the US from India with his parents when he was 9 years old. He said he saw the disparities not only between New Delhi and the US but also between himself and his cousins.

"My parents, who grew up in very low-income families and villages in South India... the opportunities they had were greatly shaped by the fact that they happened to be the ones who were picked to get a higher education in their families," he was quoted as saying by news agency PTI. Chetty added it was common at that time in developing countries that a family would pick only one child to get advanced education because they couldn't afford to educate all the kids.

"And it so happened to be that my mom was the one chosen in her family, and my dad was the one chosen in his family," he said." And I could kind of see how that's played out through the generations in my own family, through the opportunities my cousins have had versus what I've had... ending up here at Harvard and the various opportunities I've had, I felt have stemmed from that."

(With inputs from PTI)

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