Leah Boustan

Leah Boustan is Professor of Economics and Director of the Economic History Program at Yale University. She is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where she co-directs the Development of the American Economy Program, and a co-editor of the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.

Her research sits at the intersection of economic history and labor economics, with a focus on migration, labor markets, and inequality in American history. She is the author of Competition in the Promised Land: Black Migrants in Northern Cities and Labor Markets (Princeton University Press, 2016), which received awards from the Social Science History Association and the Economic History Association. Her second book, Streets of Gold: America’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success (with Ran Abramitzky; PublicAffairs, 2022), was named among the best books of 2022 by The New Yorker, Forbes, and Behavioral Scientist.

Boustan received the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in 2012 and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2026. She is also a Fellow of the Econometric Society and the Society of Labor Economists. She earned her A.B. from Princeton University and her Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Project

Census Linking Project

The Census Linking Project offers researchers the ability to create longitudinal datasets using historical US Census data (1850-1940). We provide links between each pair of complete-count Censuses using a wide variety of linking algorithms.

Latest Public Lecture

AEA Distinguished Lecture, "Where are the Streets of Gold? Immigrant assimilation in the US and Europe"

January 3, 2026
Philadelphia, PA