Devah Pager is Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at Harvard University. She is the Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She directs the Multidiscipinary Program in Inequality and Social Policy.
Pager's research focuses on institutions affecting racial stratification, including education, labor markets, and the criminal justice system. Her work has involved a series of field experiments studying discrimination against minorities and ex-offenders in the low-wage labor market. Her book, Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration (University of Chicago, 2007), investigates the racial and economic consequences of large scale imprisonment for contemporary U.S. labor markets. Other projects examine the longer-term consequences of labor market discrimination for job seekers and employers, self-selection in job search, the organizational bases of discrimination, and the long-term consequences of legal debt.
Pager holds Masters Degrees from Stanford University and the University of Cape Town, and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She spent the 2002-03 academic year as a Fulbright fellow in Paris studying changes in crime policy and its relationship to patterns of immigration and ethnic tension in contemporary France.