NPR

The Dark Side Of The Recovery Revealed In Big Data

The way the government tracks recessions is largely the same as it was 70 years ago. A research group is working to change that and is revealing a lot about the lopsided recovery along the way.
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On the afternoon of April 3, John Friedman went down to his basement and hopped on a call with his colleagues Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren. The three are the directors of Opportunity Insights, a research and policy institute based at Harvard University. The organization has been doing some amazing work, harnessing the power of big data to find solutions to rising inequality and declining upward mobility in America. With the economy in free fall, they debated what they should do next. They decided to swing for the fences — pursuing a new

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