School of Humanities Arts and Social Sciences

MIT has ranked first in 11 different academic fields in the latest QS World University Rankings, reports Michael T. Nietzel for Forbes.

A study by Prof. David Autor and his colleagues have found that the pandemic narrowed the wage gap between America’s highest and lowest paid workers, reports Geoff Colvin for Fortune. The study also found “wages of the least educated workers increased more than the wage of the most educated workers, reducing the college wage premium,” writes Colvin.

Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Heitman highlights Prof. Alan Lightman’s book, “The Transcendent Brain: Spirituality in the Age of Science.” Heitman writes Lightman’s “gift for distilling complex ideas and emotions to their bright essence quickly wins the day.” He adds that Lightman “belongs to a noble tradition of science writers, including Oliver Sacks and Lewis Thomas, who can poke endlessly into a subject and, in spite of their prodding, or perhaps because of it, stir up fresh embers of wonder.”

Wired reporter Will Knight spotlights a new working paper by graduate students Shakked Noy and Whitney Zhang examining the impact of providing office workers access to ChatGPT for use in a series of office tasks. The researchers found “people with access to the chatbot were able to complete the assigned tasks in 17 minutes, compared to an average 27 minutes for those without the bot, and that the quality of their work improved significantly,” writes Knight.

Rebecca Blank PhD ’83, who helped reform how the government measures poverty, has died at 67, reports Alex Traub for The New York Times. Blank’s work “changed the poverty calculus in numerous ways, for instance by using as a basis not merely food budgets but also an array of consumer expenditures, including on clothing and shelter,” writes Traub. “In addition, it updated the view of a family’s financial resources to take account of government benefits not issued as cash.”

Bloomberg reporters Alex Tanzi and Mackenzie Hawkins spotlight a paper by graduate student Evan J. Soltas and his colleague Gopi Shah Goda discussing Covid-19’s impact on the labor market. The researchers “found that workers who miss a full week because of COVID are about 7 percentage points less likely to be employed a year later,” writes Tanzi and Hawkins.

Prof. Emeritus Peter Diamond speaks with Boston Globe reporter Scot Lehigh about the future of Social Security. “Given the large past differences in the approaches of the two parties, it is important that citizens press members of Congress to be specific about their views on fixing the program,” says Diamond. “And it’s just as important that voters let their members of Congress know their own views.”

New research by Prof. David Autor explores how the wage gap narrowed during the Covid-19 pandemic, reports Justin Lahart for The Wall Street Journal. Lahart writes that the findings suggest that “even as the pandemic fades, competition for low-wage workers will be more intense than before the pandemic. That could lead to further reductions in income inequality, raise labor costs at firms that employ low-wage workers, and reshape the U.S. business landscape.”

A study co-authored by Prof. Jonathan Gruber finds “encouraging parents to care for young children at home is not necessarily the best policy,” writes Kevin Lewis for The Boston Globe. “Higher payments — and thus more mothers staying home — were associated with worse performance on cognitive tests at ages 4-5, lower likelihood of being in the higher-level track in high school, and more teenage crime,” Lewis notes. “The opposite effect was observed in families that benefited from a policy reform that lowered their day care fees.”

Undergraduate student Sasha Horokh speaks with GBH reporters Paris Alston and Jeremy Siegel about the ongoing war in Ukraine. “I think it's important that we do not get used to this, and to keep supporting Ukraine,” says Horokh.

Prof. M. Taylor Fravel, director of the MIT Security Studies Program, speaks with New Yorker reporter Isaac Chotiner about China’s military strategy and the future of U.S.-China relations. “In the last five years, China, with a much more modern military, has many more options that it can draw from when it’s thinking about how to advance its interests,” says Fravel. “It can use displays of force to much greater effect than before.”

Prof. David Autor speaks with Tony Dokoupil of CBS News about how the rise of artificial intelligence could change the quality of jobs. "What we've seen over the last four decades in the U.S. and many industrialized economies is what economists call labor market polarization, which means the hollowing out of the middle set of jobs,” says Autor. The "hollowing out" of the middle has led to some in the labor market moving up and making more money, while others are now making less — and "that's especially where the pain happens," Autor adds. 

Prof. David Autor speaks with ABC News reporter Max Zahn about whether new AI technologies could displace workers. "The thing we shouldn't be worried about at present or for quite a while is the quantity of jobs," said Autor. "We should be worried about the quality of jobs."

Bloomberg reporters Simon Kennedy and Chris Anstey write that Kazuo Ueda PhD ’80, who is expected to be named the Bank of Japan’s next governor, is one of the many prominent students of former MIT Prof. Stanley Fischer PhD ’69. The emphasis at MIT was “economics about the real world," said Fischer. “The faculty makes the place but the students also make the place. One of the reasons you go to MIT is because you have the best students in the world.”

Alumnus Kazuo Ueda has been nominated to lead Japan’s central bank, reports Toru Fujioka for Bloomberg.