Predoctoral Fellowship- Insights

Overview

Predoctoral Fellowship--Opportunity Insights

Title Predoctoral Fellowship--Opportunity Insights

School Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Department/Area Opportunity Insights

Opportunity Insights (OI) at Harvard University is hiring several full-time predoctoral fellows to start in Summer 2026 to work with our research group under the direction of Raj Chetty, John Friedman, and Nathan Hendren. OI is a nonpartisan research and policy institute focused on improving economic opportunity. Founded in 2018, OI has become a nationally and internationally recognized leader in the science of economic mobility and in the use of large administrative data to understand and address inequality.

OI has published seminal work on national trends in upward mobility; racial disparities; the role of neighborhoods, social capital, credit, and higher education in upward mobility; and the use of private-sector data to understand disparate impacts in the recent economic recession and recovery. Much of the team’s ongoing research uses quasi-experimental methods to identify causal effects and test the predictors of economic and sociological models.

Examples of current research projects include long-term impacts of neighborhoods and place-based policies, the role of colleges and workforce training in upward mobility, and measuring how social networks affect mobility. OI’s work has shaped policy discussions at the national and local level, with nearly a dozen of its studies covered on the front pages of major media outlets, such as the New York Times, The Economist, The Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, and have been widely cited in policy discussions.

Fellows will be based at Harvard or Brown Universities under the direction of Professors Chetty, Friedman, and Hendren. The fellowship will include tasks that prepare for graduate school or other industry research positions, such as analyzing data, developing statistical models, creating presentations, and editing research papers. Fellows frequently co-author papers with other students or faculty members and interact regularly with professors and collaborators in a team-oriented lab environment, with regular lab meetings, seminars, and other events.

Fellows also have the opportunity to support research translation and policy work through resources such as the Opportunity Atlas, the Social Capital Atlas, and the Economic Tracker.

Fellows are invited to participate in broader activities at Harvard and Brown, including seminars and courses. The program serves as an ideal bridge between college and graduate school for students interested in empirical economics. Most previous fellows have gone on to top Ph.D. programs. Salary and benefits are competitive with other top predoctoral fellowships.

As an organization focused on economic mobility, we welcome applications from persons with varied backgrounds and perspectives. Even if applicants are uncertain whether their technical research skill or subject-matter knowledge will be competitive, we strongly encourage applications.

• Analyze data and develop statistical models as part of OI research projects.
• Edit research papers and prepare presentations.
• Co-author papers with other students or faculty members.
• Interact with professors and collaborators in a team-oriented lab environment with regular meetings and seminars.
• Support research translation and policy work through resources such as the Opportunity Atlas, the Social Capital Atlas, and the Economic Tracker.

Basic Qualifications Applicants should have completed a bachelor’s degree (or be on track to complete by July 2026) or master’s degree, have strong quantitative skills, and experience with empirical research methods. Candidates with research experience are strongly preferred, especially those with programming experience in Stata, SAS, R, and/or Python. Candidates need not be Economics majors, though they should have a strong interest in and some experience with Economics.

Successful candidates have come from a variety of backgrounds (including from undergraduate and graduate programs, industry jobs, and other research assistant positions),…