The Russell Sage Foundation is saddened to report the passing of economist Alan Krueger (Princeton University). Krueger served on the foundation’s board of trustees from 2004–2009 and as a visiting scholar during the 2003–2004 academic year. He also co-edited the RSF volumes The Roaring Nineties (2002) and The Market Comes to Education in Sweden (2006).

Krueger was the James Madison Professor of Political Economy at Princeton University and a former adviser to U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. He served as chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers from 2012­–2013, and, prior to that, as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy from 2009–2010. In a statement, Barack Obama said of Krueger, “Alan was someone who was deeper than numbers on a screen and charts on a page. He saw economic policy not as a matter of abstract theories, but as a way to make people’s lives better.”

Among Krueger’s many scholarly accomplishments was the creation of the influential “Great Gatsby curve,” which illustrates the connection between concentrated wealth and intergenerational mobility and shows that in countries with high economic inequality, children from poor families are less likely to move up the economic ladder. With RSF grantee David Card, Krueger also conducted a groundbreaking study of employers in the fast food industry and found that minimum wage increases did not result in job losses, defying the conventional economic wisdom that statutory increases in minimum wages would lead firms to cut costs by reducing employment. 

“Alan Krueger taught me about economic policy for more than two decades,” RSF trustee Jason Furman (Harvard University) wrote on Monday. “His convincing empirical research on the most important questions is a lasting legacy.”

Read the full obituary from Princeton University.