Janet Currie
Janet Currie, a renowned economist and pioneer in the economic analysis of child development, has been appointed the David Swensen Professor of Economics and co-director of the Tobin-Cowles Health Economics and Policy Program. The appointment was effective July 1, 2025.
Currie joined the Department of Economics in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences last year. She also has a secondary appointment at the Yale School of the Environment.
Before coming to Yale, she was Henry Putnam Professor of Economics and Public Affairs and co-director of the Center for Health and Well Being at Princeton University. She also directs to program on Children and Families at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She held previous appointments at Columbia University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Currie’s current research focuses on socioeconomic differences in health and access to health care, environmental threats to health, the important role of mental health, and the long-run impact of health problems in pregnancy and early childhood. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Departments of Agriculture and of the Environment, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the NOMIS Foundation, among other sources.
She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and of the American Academy of Art and Sciences. She was the president of the American Economic Association in 2024 and has served as the president of the American Society of Health Economics, the Society of Labor Economics, the Eastern Economic Association, and the Western Economic Association. She was named a Distinguished CES Fellow by the Center for Economic Studies, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the Society of Labor Economists, and of the Econometric Society. And she has received honorary degrees from the University of Lyon, the University of Zurich, and the Università della Svizzera Italiana.
She was named a 2024 Clarivate Citation Laureate of the Institute for Scientific Information. In 2019, she was named a NOMIS Distinguished Scientist by the NOMIS Foundation, and she won the Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize in 2023. She was named one of the top 10 women in economics by the World Economic Forum in 2015, and an Alumna of Influence by the University of Toronto in 2012. She has served on the Board of Reviewing Editors of Science, as the Editor of the Journal of Economic Literature, and on the editorial boards of many other journals.
She has served on numerous committees of the National Academy of Sciences, and has been a member of the board of trustees at Princeton University Press and on the advisory boards of the Environmental Defense Fund and the Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, among other institutions. She has presented to President Biden’s cabinet and testified before the U.S. House of Representatives.
An engaged university citizen, Currie encourages active engagement in her teaching. She has supervised 46 Ph.D. students throughout her career and advised undergraduates in their senior theses. Her students have gone into careers in academia, government, and industry.
Currie earned B.A. and M.A. degrees at the University of Toronto and her Ph.D. at Princeton University.
