A homework assignment for ECON1000 that analyzed the relationship between rent and opportunity.
For this assignment, I examined:
- The relationship between opportunity outcomes (e.g., upward income mobility) and rent prices
- How other local characteristics — like racial demographics, education, or family structure — correlate with long-run outcomes
- One U.S. community of interest (Bethesda and Washington D.C.)
This course will show how "big data" can be used to understand and address some of the most important social and economic problems of our time. The course will give students an introduction to frontier research and policy applications in economics and social science in a non-technical manner that does not require prior coursework in economics or statistics, making it suitable both for students exploring economics for the first time, as well as those with more experience. Topics include equality of opportunity, education, racial disparities, effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, health care, climate change, criminal justice, and tax policy (https://www.coursicle.com/brown/courses/ECON/1000/).
The Opportunity Atlas was publicly released in 2018 and has since become a widely used tool among policymakers, journalists, and researchers. Developed by economists at Harvard and the U.S. Census Bureau, the Atlas maps the outcomes of children born between 1978 and 1983 — such as income, college attendance, and incarceration — based on where they grew up.