Faculty

Jens Ludwig, Ph.D.

 

Jens Ludwig

Jens Ludwig is a Professor of The University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration, Law School, and The Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies; Co-Director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab; a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution; Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); and co-director of the NBER's Working Group on the Economics of Crime.   

His research in the area of social policy focuses on urban poverty, education, crime, and housing, and has been funded by the Smith Richardson, Joyce, Spencer, Annie E. Casey and William T. Grant foundations, as well as by government agencies such as the National Institute of Justice, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

In the area of urban poverty, he has participated since 1995 on the evaluation of a HUD-funded randomized residential-mobility experiment known as Moving to Opportunity (MTO), which provides low-income public housing families the opportunity to relocate to private-market housing in less disadvantaged neighborhoods. He is currently serving as the Project Director for the NBER's long-term evaluation to learn more about how MTO affects outcomes for program participants on average 10 years after random assignment in the areas of work, social program participation, schooling, mental and physical health, risky and delinquent behavior, and family formation and functioning.

His research on education covers a range of topics from early education to school-to-work transitions, and includes recent projects on the effects of family resources on children's outcomes and the consequences of court-ordered school desegregation on youth involvement with crime. His co-authored article on race, peer norms and education with Philip Cook was awarded the 1997 Vernon Prize for best article by the Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM).

Professor Ludwig has also been actively involved in research on a variety of crime issues, particularly on the topic of gun violence. He is the co-author with Duke University professor Philip J. Cook of an evaluation of the federal Brady Act published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, as well as of the book Gun Violence: The Real Costs (2000, Oxford University Press), and co-editor with Cook of Evaluating Gun Policy (2003, Brookings Institution Press). His research on gun violence and gun control has been published in leading scholarly and scientific journals, has been presented to state legislatures and committees in California, Kansas, and Minnesota, and has been featured in articles and reports by the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time Magazine, NPR, CBS, NBC, and CNN.

Prior to coming to the University of Chicago he was Professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University. He is currently a member of the editorial boards of Criminology, the Journal of Quantitative Criminology, and the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, has served as the Andrew Mellon Visiting Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, as a visiting scholar to the Northwestern University / University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research, and as a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School, and is an elected member of APPAM's policy council (board of directors). In 2006 he was awarded APPAM's David Kershaw Prize for distinguished contributions to public policy by the age of 40.