Post-Doctoral Fellowship Program on Wealth and Income Inequality

The extent of wealth and income inequality in a society, and trends in these measures, have important implications not only for the distribution of well-being but also for economic dynamism, the allocation of political power, and even the stability of civil society. Economic research has focused on the measurement of inequality and on the factors that contribute to changes in it. These include changes in the market returns to various labor market skills, the rising importance of economic rents and in the concentration of ownership of these rents, tax changes that have differentially benefited high-income, middle-income, and lower-income households, and economic shocks that have weakened the economic position of the middle-class households. 

To promote research on measuring wealth and income inequality, the factors that contribute to disparities, and the effect of public policies on these disparities, the NBER, with the generous support of the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Foundation, supports post-doctoral fellows who spend a year conducting intensive research while visiting the NBER’s headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The fellows develop and advance their research agendas, while also networking with leading economists based in the Boston area. In keeping with the NBER’s “no policy recommendation” guardrails, fellows do not make normative recommendations but rather contribute to the analytical framework for policy analysis and design.