34 Facts About Simon Kuznets

Simon Kuznets was born in Pinsk in 1901, in the Russian Empire, or what is today Belarus, to Lithuanian-Jewish parents.

Simon Kuznets completed his schooling, first at the Rivne, then, Kharkiv Realschule of present-day Ukraine.

In 1918, Kuznets entered the Kharkiv Institute of Commerce where he studied economic sciences, statistics, history and mathematics under the guidance of professors P Fomin, A Antsiferov, V Levitsky, S Bernstein, V Davats, and others.

In 1922, the Simon Kuznets family emigrated to the United States.

Simon Kuznets then studied at Columbia University under the guidance of Wesley Clair Mitchell.

From 1925 to 1926, Simon Kuznets spent time studying economic patterns in prices as the Research Fellow at the Social Science Research Council.

From 1931 until 1936, Simon Kuznets was a part-time professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

Simon Kuznets was elected to the Pi Gamma Mu social science honor society chapter at the University of Pennsylvania and actively served as a chapter officer in the 1940s; becoming a full-time professor from 1936 until 1954.

In 1954, Simon Kuznets moved to Johns Hopkins University, where he was professor of political economy until 1960.

From 1961 until his retirement in 1970, Simon Kuznets taught at Harvard.

Apart from that, Simon Kuznets collaborated with a number of research organizations and government agencies.

From 1931 to 1934, at Mitchell's behest, Simon Kuznets took charge of the NBER's work on US national income accounts, giving the first official estimation of the US national income.

In 1936, Simon Kuznets took the lead in establishing the Conference on Research, Income and Wealth, which brought together government officials and academic economists, engaged in the development of the US national income and product accounts, and in 1947 helped to establish its international counterpart, the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth.

Simon Kuznets took part in work to assess the country's capacity to expand military production.

Simon Kuznets cooperated with the Growth Center of Yale University, the Social Science Research Council.

Simon Kuznets was elected as the President of the American Economic Association, President of the American Statistical Association, an honorable member of the Association of Economic History, the Royal Statistical Society of England and a member of the Econometric Society, the International Statistical Institute, the American Philosophical Society, the Royal Swedish Academy and a corresponding member of the British Academy.

Simon Kuznets was awarded the Medal of Francis Walker.

Simon Kuznets died on July 8,1985, at the age of 84.

Simon Kuznets's name is associated with the formation of modern economic science as an empirical discipline, the development of statistical methods of research and the emergence of quantitative economic history.

Simon Kuznets is credited with revolutionising econometrics, and this work is credited with fueling the so-called Keynesian revolution.

Simon Kuznets treated a priori and speculative conceptions with deep skepticism.

Simon Kuznets was closely familiar with the economics of Russia and Ukraine of the early 20th century.

The first major research project in which Simon Kuznets was involved was the study of long series of economic dynamics in the USA undertaken in the mid-1920s.

In 1931, at Mitchell's behest, Simon Kuznets took charge of the NBER's work on US national income accounts.

Simon Kuznets had success to solve numerous problems ranging from lack of sources of information and bias assessments, to the development of the theoretical concept of national income.

Simon Kuznets's works allowed us to analyze the structure of the national income, and expose to detailed study a number of specific problems of the national economy.

Simon Kuznets helped the US Department of Commerce to standardize the measurement of GNP.

However, Simon Kuznets shook the economic world by finding that Keynes' predictions, while seemingly accurate in short-run cross-sections, broke down under more rigorous examination.

Simon Kuznets used new data to show that, over a longer span of time the savings ratio remained constant, despite large changes in income.

Simon Kuznets proposed a research program that involved extensive empirical studies on the four key elements of economic growth.

Simon Kuznets collected and analyzed statistical indicators of economic performance of 14 countries in Europe, the US and Japan for 60 years.

Simon Kuznets made a profound analysis of the impact on economic growth by demographic processes and characteristics.

Simon Kuznets discovered the patterns in savings-income behavior which launched the life-cycle-permanent-income hypothesis of Modigliani and Friedman.

Simon Kuznets conducted his research for many years and finally published his findings in 1963.