Nathaniel Hendren

Overview

Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Works on intergenerational economic mobility, the efficiency of social insurance programs, and the long-run effects of childhood environments on economic outcomes. Close collaborator of Raj Chetty in the Opportunity Insights project.

Key Contributions / Features

• Opportunity Atlas and Chetty et al. 2014c: Co-author of the foundational geographic mobility paper documenting rank-rank slopes and absolute upward mobility across 741 U.S. commuting zones; co-developer of the Opportunity Atlas public dataset.
• Childhood exposure effects (Chetty and Hendren 2018a/b): Lead causal identification paper showing that each additional year of childhood in a higher-opportunity neighborhood increases adult income rank by ~4% of a percentile; moving at birth captures ~80% of the origin–destination gap; no critical age; three placebo tests (cohort, gender, quantile convergence) confirm causality. Reconciles MTO null: MTO families moved children at ~age 8, leaving only ~48% potential pickup. See Intergenerational Income Mobility.
• Welfare costs of social insurance: Applied partial-equilibrium framework to estimate the insurance value and fiscal externalities of social programs (Medicaid, disability insurance, unemployment insurance), quantifying the net welfare gain per dollar of government expenditure.

Related

• Raj Chetty
• Patrick Kline
• Emmanuel Saez
• Intergenerational Income Mobility
• Income-Mortality Gradient

Sources

• Chetty et al. 2014c — Where Is the Land of Opportunity The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States
• Chetty and Hendren 2018 — The Effects of Neighborhoods on Intergenerational Mobility
• Autor Figlio Karbownik Roth and Wasserman 2019 — Family Disadvantage and the Gender Gap in Behavioral and Educational Outcomes
• Friedman et al 2016 — Long-Run Drivers of Disability Insurance Rates
• Friedman et al 2018 — Explaining Geographic Differences in Young Disability Insurance Rates