ABSTRACT
Richard Ainley Easterlin is University Professor and Professor of Economics at the University of Southern California, where he has taught since 1982. He was born in 1926 in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey and was educated in mechanical engineering at the Stevens Institute of Technology (M.E., 1945) and in economics at the University of Pennsylvania (A.M., 1949; Ph.D., 1953). He taught at Penn from 1948 to 1982, first as an instructor and in his final four years as William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Economics; he was also a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (1956-66). In keeping with his wide range of interests, he has been President of the Population Association of America (1977-8) and of the Economic History Association (1979-80), and has since the 1960s served on editorial or advisory boards of multiple journals in economics, economic history and demography. He was elected Fellow of The American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1978, Member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2002, and was named Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association for 2006. The interview took place in the autumn of 1992 at USC, with a few additional responses elicited in early 1993. The interviewer was the late K S of the University of California-Los Angeles, who writes:
With three of the last four Cole Prizes for best article in the JEH having been awarded to members of its community, Southern California definitely has come of age as a center for economic history. Lance Davis and Richard Easterlin preside over the local economic history group, and the two close friends are enthusiastic boosters of life in this part of the world. Both are deeply serious about scholarship, applying high standards to their own work as well as to that of others. They differ dramatically, however, in personal style. Lance is intense and social, empathetically drawing from strangers the intimate details of their data and their love lives. With Lance, what you see is what you get. Dick maintains more distance, makes every word count, and exercises quiet charm
and dry wit. There is always an air of mystery about him. I have long admired Dick for the originality of his ideas and the fundamental importance of the issues he tackles. Despite his interests having shifted to other fields in recent years, he still matches Bob Fogel, another student of Simon Kuznets, in having the greatest number of individual items on my undergraduate reading list in the American economic history course.
