The Economist who Says Schools Are Safer Than You Think

When the feds failed to track COVID-19, Emily Oster stepped in.

- By Katherine Mangu-Ward

EMILY OSTER IS a Harvard-educated economist at Brown University—not the usual launching pad for gurudom. But she is nonetheless the sage at the center of a low-key cult. She popped onto the scene when her dissertation findings on “missing girls” in China were picked up by Freakonomics authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner but ascended to a higher plane when she applied her background in health economics and statistical methods to pregnancy and childbirth in her 2013 book Expecting Better. She did the same for toddlers and infants in 2019’s Cribsheet; a third book in the series, The Family Firm, will be out this summer.

In a certain parental set, Oster’s books are passed around slightly furtively, with the air of letting someone in on a secret. Her goal is to help parents translate academic literature into actionable items, but she often ends up serving as a counterpoint to the anxious, overcautious parenting advice doled out in glossy mags and on playgrounds.

When you are an economist who tells pregnant women that research suggests it’s OK to have the occasional wine and sushi, you will be welcomed as a liberator. When you explain that sleep training and formula don’t show serious long-term negative effects, you will be worshipped. You will also be vilified by the keepers of the conventional wisdom, of course, and Oster has gotten her share of hate mail.