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One of two Harvard professors to receive the university’s George Ledlie Prize earlier this month was Raj Chetty, the William A. Ackman Professor of Economics at Harvard University, a former MacArthur “genius” Fellow and director of Opportunity Insights, a group of economists based at Harvard who study inequality. “Using anonymized tax records, Opportunity Insights constructed The Opportunity Atlas, an interactive tool that maps out economic outcomes for children across the U.S. to highlight which neighborhoods seem to offer the best chance to rise from poverty,” writes Anna Lamb in The Harvard Gazette. “The Atlas, which can be viewed free online, uses multigenerational data from 70,000 neighborhoods across America.”
The Prize is awarded no more frequently than every two years to a member of the Harvard community who has, “since the last awarding of said prize, by research, discovery, or otherwise, made the most valuable contribution to science, or in any way for the benefit of mankind.” Lamb notes that Chetty’s past work has influenced the Housing and Urban Development Agency to redesign some affordable-housing policies to increase access to higher-opportunity neighborhoods and inspired several cities to undertake “new job-training programs as part of broader place-based initiatives.”
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