Mincer, Jacob, 1922-2006

BIOGHIST REQUIRED Jacob Mincer was a labor economist and professor of economics at Columbia University.

Mincer was born in Tomaszow Poland in 1922. He was interned in German labor camps during World War II, and, after surviving the Holocaust, emigrated to the United States in 1948. He received his BA from Emory University in 1950 and his PhD in Economics from Columbia in 1957. He taught briefly at the City College of New York, Hebrew University, the Stockholm School of Economics, and the University of Chicago before returning to Columbia University where spent the remainder of his career, retiring and accepting Emeritus status in 1991.

Mincer, who is often called the father of modern labor economics, helped to define that field through his work studying human capital. He was one of the first economists to study women's earnings and their effect on family finances and economics. In 2002 Mincer was awarded the IZA Prize in Labor economics and in 2004 he received a Career Achievement Award from the University of Chicago's Society of Labor Economists, an award that was later renamed the Mincer Award in his honor.

Mincer died in 2006 of complications from Parkinson's disease.