Kerwin Kofi Charles facts for kids

Kerwin Kofi Charles is a very important person in the world of economics and education. He is currently the Dean and a Professor at the Yale School of Management. This means he leads the school and teaches about economics, policy, and how to manage things. He also works with the National Bureau of Economic Research, which is a group that studies economic issues. He is a respected member of the Society of Labor Economists.

Before joining Yale, Professor Charles was a distinguished professor at the Harris School of Public Policy at The University of Chicago. He also taught at the University of Michigan for many years.

Leading the Yale School of Management

A Big Gift for Education

On December 5, 2019, Professor Charles shared exciting news. The Yale School of Management received a huge gift of $100 million! This money came from The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. It was given to help improve leadership in public school systems across the country.

The Broad Center at Yale

This generous gift helped create something new called the Broad Center at the Yale School of Management. This center focuses on making public schools better. It offers a special master's degree in Education Management. It also provides training for top leaders in public school systems. The best part? Both the degree and the training are completely free! The Broad Center also collects research data to understand what makes school leaders effective.

Exploring Economic Ideas

What Professor Charles Studies

Professor Charles is an expert in applied microeconomics. This is a part of economics that looks at how individuals and businesses make decisions. He studies many interesting topics. These include how much people earn and how much wealth they have. He also looks at how people spend money, especially on things that are easy to see.

His research also covers important social issues. He studies how race and gender can affect jobs. He looks at how economic status can pass from parents to children. He also researches how families deal with losing a job or getting sick.

Understanding Earnings Differences

Professor Charles worked with Patrick Bayer to study how much black and white men earned in the U.S. between 1940 and 2014. They found that the average difference in earnings between these groups was similar in 2014 to what it was in 1950. However, they also discovered that black men with higher incomes, especially those with a college education, were earning closer to their white peers.

Housing Booms and College Choices

With Erik Hurst and Matthew J. Notowidigdo, Professor Charles studied how housing booms affect young people. They found that when housing prices went up a lot, fewer young people went to college. Instead, they chose to work because there were more job opportunities. When the housing market later slowed down, some of these young people did go back to college, but not all of them.

Spending Habits and Race

In another study with Erik Hurst and Nikolai Roussanov, Professor Charles looked at how different racial groups spend money. They found that Black and Hispanic Americans often spend more on visible things like cars. This is sometimes called "conspicuous consumption." The research suggested that some Black Americans might do this to appear wealthier than they are.

Incarceration and Families

Working with Ming-Ching Luoh, Professor Charles researched how high rates of incarceration (people being in prison) among black men affect families. They found that it can impact marriage rates and the number of children born outside of marriage in Black families in the United States.

Sexism and Women's Careers

In recent research with Jonathan Guryan and Jessica Pan, Professor Charles used data from the Census and the General Social Survey. They showed that the careers of white women in the United States can be influenced by the level of sexism in the state where they were born.

Selected Research Papers

• Anderson, D. Mark, Kerwin Kofi Charles, Claudio Las Heras Olivares, and Daniel I. Rees. 2019. "Was the First Public Health Campaign Successful?" American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 11 (2): 143–75.
• Charles, Kerwin Kofi, Erik Hurst, and Matthew J. Notowidigdo. 2018. "Housing Booms and Busts, Labor Market Opportunities, and College Attendance." American Economic Review, 108 (10): 2947–94.
• Charles, Kerwin Kofi, Erik Hurst, and Nikolai Roussanov. "Conspicuous consumption and race." The Quarterly Journal of Economics 124, no. 2 (2009): 425–467.
• Charles, Kerwin Kofi, and Erik Hurst. "The correlation of wealth across generations." Journal of Political Economy 111, no. 6 (2003): 1155–1182.
• Barsky, Robert, John Bound, Kerwin Kofi Charles, and Joseph P. Lupton. "Accounting for the black–white wealth gap: a nonparametric approach." Journal of the American Statistical Association 97, no. 459 (2002): 663–673.
• Charles, Kerwin Kofi, and Melvin Stephens Jr. "Job displacement, disability, and divorce." Journal of Labor Economics 22, no. 2 (2004): 489–522.

About His Life

Kerwin Kofi Charles was born in Buxton-Friendship, a town in Guyana. His father, Reuben Charles, used to be a Chief Fisheries Officer. His mother, Paulette Charles, was a teacher. To honor his grandmother, Professor Charles gives a special $1000 prize every year. This prize goes to students in his hometown who do very well on their Grade Six Examinations.