James Heckman on Inequality and Economic Mobility

EconTalk

Library of Economics and Liberty

Ethics, Philosophy, Economics, Books, Science, Business, Courses, Social Sciences, Society & Culture, Interviews, Education, History

4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 26 July 2021

⏱️ 84 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Economist and Nobel Laureate James Heckman of the University of Chicago talks about inequality and economic mobility with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Drawing on research on inequality in Denmark with Rasmus Landerso, Heckman argues that despite the efforts of the Danish welfare state to provide equal access to education, there is little difference in economic mobility between the United States and Denmark. The conversation includes a general discussion of economic mobility in the United States along with a critique of Chetty and others' work on the power of neighborhood to determine one's economic destiny.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and
0:07.1	Liberty.
0:08.1	I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover
0:12.7	Institution.
0:14.0	Go to econtalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this episode and find links and
0:18.6	other information related to today's conversation.
0:21.4	You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done going back to 2006.
0:26.8	Our email address is mail at econtalk.org.
0:30.3	We'd love to hear from you.
0:37.5	Today is July 7th, 2021 and my guest is economist James Heckman of the University of Chicago.
0:44.3	He's the director of the Center for the Economics of Human Development there and he was awarded
0:48.4	the Nobel Prize in Economics in the year 2000.
0:51.6	His first appearance on econ talk was in January of 2016 discussing the state of econometrics.
0:57.6	Our topic for today is economic mobility and inequality.
1:01.6	Drawing on a recent NB are working paper in March of 2021.
1:05.6	The deco authored with Rasmus Land or so.
1:08.0	That paper is lessons from Denmark about inequality and social mobility.
1:13.8	There's also a non-technical version of that paper with the results that I may quote
1:18.8	as well and we'll link to both of them.
1:21.1	Jim, welcome back to econ talk.
1:23.0	Well, nice to see you again, Russ.
1:24.5	It's been years and we've been that...
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Library of Economics and Liberty, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Library of Economics and Liberty and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.