Jason Fletcher

Credentials: Professor

Phone: 608-262-4436

Address:
2436 Sewell Social Sciences
1180 Observatory Drive
Madison, WI 53706

About

Jason Fletcher is a Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Public Affairs with appointments in Applied Economics and Population Health Sciences.

A specialist in health economics, economics of education, social genomics, 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 examining how in utero and early life conditions affect later life health, cognition, and mortality. He is an affiliate of the Institute for Research on Poverty, Holtz Center for Science & Technology Studies, Center for Demography and Ecology, and the Data Science Institute 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 was a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow for his work on US mortality.

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 Reveals About Ourselves, Our History and Our Future—was published by Princeton University Press.

Curriculum Vitae Pronouns: he/him

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