LSE United States Politics and Policy blog:
Social mobility in the United States depends heavily on where you live
6 January 2017
There is considerable geographical variation in the opportunities available to disadvantaged children in the United States, according to research by Raj Chetty, who delivered the 2016 Lionel Robbins Memorial Lectures at LSE. Maria Molina-Domene talked to him about his findings, the use of big data and the implications for policy.
Raj Chetty was in London in October to deliver three lectures on the theme of social mobility in the United States. While he was at LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance (CEP), I talked to him about the use of big data in economic research, notably in the Equality of Opportunity Project that he leads. His findings on the differences in opportunity across local areas in the United States and the causal impact of neighborhoods were the core of his lectures.