Miles Corak

Miles Corak is a Senior Scholar with the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality and Professor of Economics at The Graduate Center, City University of New York.

During 2017, he was the Economist in Residence at Employment and Social Development Canada, where he contributed to the design and writing of Canada’s first poverty reduction strategy.

His academic publications focus on labour markets and social policy, including child poverty, access to university education, social mobility, and unemployment. He has edited three books, and his paper published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, “Income Inequality, Equality of Opportunity, and Intergenerational Mobility,” examines the relationship between inequality and social mobility across countries, a relationship that has become known as the “Great Gatsby Curve.” It was awarded the 2014 Doug Purvis Prize by the Canadian Economics Association, which annually recognizes a highly significant contribution to Canadian economic policy.

His research has been used by The White House and numerous governments across the world. It has been cited by many of the major print and electronic media, including, among others, The Economist, The Financial Times, and The New York Times.

Dr. Corak holds a BA in economics and political science and an MA in economics from McGill University, and completed his PhD at Queen’s University. He joined The Graduate Center in 2017, after ten years as a full professor at the University of Ottawa, and 20 years in the Canadian federal government, most of that time spent as a director of research at Statistics Canada.

He has also held visiting appointments with UNICEF, the University of London, Princeton University, the Russell Sage Foundation, Harvard University, and Sapienza Università di Roma.