Professor of Sociology, Applied Economics, and Population Health Sciences
Jason Fletcher is a Professor of Public Affairs with appointments in Sociology, Applied Economics and Population Health Sciences at University of Wisconsin-Madison. A specialist in health economics, economics of education and child and adolescent health policy, Professor Fletcher focuses his research on examining social network effects on adolescent education and health outcomes, combining genetics and social science research, estimating long-term consequences of childhood mental illness, and child and adolescent mental health policy. He is an affiliate of the Center for Demography and Ecology, Institute for Research on Poverty, and Center for Demography on Health and Aging at the University and a Research Associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) and member of the Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Group at the University of Chicago. He earned a B.S. in economics and public administration from the University of Tennessee–Knoxville (Summa Cum Laude) and his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in Applied Economics. From 2010-2012, he was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar at Columbia University. In 2012 he was selected for a career development award by the William T. Grant Foundation. That award is funding a study of the interplay between genetics and social settings in youth development. He currently is working on a project examining trends in educational mobility in the US sponsored by the Russell Sage Foundation and is a co-editor/managing editor of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. Professor Fletcher's recent articles have appeared in the Review of Economics and Statistics, The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Journal of Health Economics, and Demography. His book (with Dalton Conley)—The Genome Factor: What the Social Genomics Revolution Tells Us About Ourselves, Our History and Our Future—was published by Princeton University Press.
