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| The Equality of Opportunity Project | |
|---|---|
| Name | The Equality of Opportunity Project |
| Formation | 2015 |
| Founders | Raj Chetty; Nathaniel Hendren; John Friedman |
| Type | Research project |
| Location | United States |
| Fields | Economics; Public policy; Sociology |
The Equality of Opportunity Project is a research initiative focused on intergenerational mobility and social stratification in the United States. It produced large-scale empirical studies linking childhood circumstances to adult outcomes and created publicly accessible datasets and interactive maps used by scholars, policymakers, and media organizations. Its work intersected with debates involving universities, think tanks, federal agencies, philanthropic foundations, and state governments.
The project analyzed patterns of income mobility across United States counties, linking childhood neighborhoods to adult earnings while collaborating with institutions such as Harvard University, Princeton University, Stanford University, National Bureau of Economic Research, and the Brookings Institution. It produced granular results presented via interactive tools consulted by outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal and informed discussions at venues such as the White House and the United States Congress. Key personnel included scholars affiliated with Harvard University Department of Economics, Harvard Kennedy School, NBER affiliates, and research partnerships with state agencies in California, Texas, and New York (state).
The initiative was co-founded by economists Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, and John Friedman, who held appointments at institutions including Harvard University, Harvard Kennedy School, NBER, University of Chicago, and Brown University. Leadership drew on collaborations with researchers such as Emmanuel Saez, Claudia Goldin, and Steven Levitt and engaged advisors from foundations like the Gates Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The team worked with federal actors such as the Internal Revenue Service for administrative data access and partnered with state agencies in California, Massachusetts, and Tennessee for validation efforts.
The project employed administrative data linkage methods using tax records from the Internal Revenue Service combined with census data from the United States Census Bureau and address histories from postal records tied to United States Postal Service data. Researchers used econometric techniques developed in literature with origins in work by economists like Angus Deaton, Milton Friedman, and Thomas Piketty while building on mobility measures from scholars associated with NBER and the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Methodological advances included large-scale machine learning infrastructure at institutions like Google and computing collaborations with Amazon Web Services and university high-performance clusters at Harvard University and Stanford University.
Major papers published in venues linked to NBER and leading journals reported U.S. geographic variation in upward mobility, identifying "mobility hotspots" and correlates such as segregation, school quality metrics from National Center for Education Statistics, and family structure measures tied to administrative records. High-profile studies included estimates of intergenerational income elasticity, analyses of neighborhood effects comparing outcomes across metropolitan areas like San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, Atlanta, and Detroit, and publications emphasizing policy-relevant correlations cited by scholars such as Daron Acemoglu, Esther Duflo, and Angrist, Joshua D.. The project also released interactive maps and data tools that were used alongside reports by Pew Research Center and the Economic Policy Institute.
Findings influenced municipal and state policy discussions in jurisdictions including New York (state), California, Illinois, and Massachusetts and informed federal briefings at the White House and testimony before the United States Congress. Policymakers from administrations associated with figures such as Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden referenced mobility evidence in debates over tax policy, housing policy connected to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and education reforms tied to the Department of Education. Think tanks including the Brookings Institution, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Heritage Foundation engaged with the findings in policy memos.
Scholars and commentators from institutions like Columbia University, Yale University, and University of Chicago raised concerns about causal interpretation, data confidentiality linked to the Internal Revenue Service, and robustness checks similar to debates in literature by Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens. Critics from organizations such as the Cato Institute and the Institute for Policy Studies questioned policy prescriptions, while privacy advocates connected to groups like the ACLU and scholars at MIT debated anonymization and linkage protocols. The project faced scrutiny over media representation of results in outlets such as The New York Times and methodological critiques published in working papers circulated via SSRN and NBER.
The project left a legacy of publicly available datasets, reproducible code, and visualization platforms now used by researchers at Harvard University, Princeton University, University of Chicago, Yale University, and international teams in United Kingdom, Canada, and Sweden. Ongoing lines of work build on collaborations with agencies like the Internal Revenue Service, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Education and inform comparative mobility studies citing scholars such as Branko Milanović and Tony Atkinson. Its methods continue to influence empirical research agendas across universities, think tanks, and international organizations including the OECD and the World Bank.
Category:Research projects