Janet Yellen is an economist from the United States. From 2014 to 2018, she was Chair of the Federal Reserve System. Before that, she was Vice-Chair. In November 2020, Joe Biden announced that Janet would serve as Treasury Secretary under his administration.
According to a financial filing released ahead of her term as Treasury Secretary, Janet and her husband, Nobel Prize-winning economist George Akerlof, control assets between $8 and $20 million.
Early Life
Janet Yellen was born on August 13, 1946, in Brooklyn, New York City to Anna, an elementary school teacher, and Julius, a physician. She comes from Polish Jews and has a brother named John who is older than her.
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Yellen went to Fort Hamilton High School and was the top student in her class. After that, she went to Brown University’s Pembroke College, where she earned a BA in economics in 1967. In 1971, Yellen got an MA and a PhD in economics from Yale University.
Career Beginnings in Academia
Yellen became an assistant professor of economics at Harvard University after she got her PhD. She taught there from 1971 to 1976, before the Federal Reserve Board of Governors hired her as an economist.
At the Fed, Yellen looked into ways to make international money better. In 1980, she joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
There, she did research on macroeconomics and taught both undergraduate and MBA students. Yellen became a full professor in 1985 and earned the Haas School’s award for outstanding teacher twice.
Council of Economic Advisers and Federal Reserve
In 1994, when Yellen was on leave from Berkeley, President Clinton asked her to join the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. She left the Federal Reserve at the beginning of 1997 to lead the Council of Economic Advisers.
Yellen was in charge of the CEA’s landmark report on the difference in income between men and women. The report said that the pay gap was caused by discrimination in the workplace. In 1999, Yellen left the CEA to return to teaching at Berkeley.
Go Back to the Federal Reserve
In 2004, Yellen was the first woman to lead the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank. She served until 2010 when she left to become vice-chair of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors under President Obama.
Subsequently, in 2013, Yellen was nominated to replace Ben Bernanke as chair of the Federal Reserve, the first time a vice-chair had been elevated to that position. She was also the first woman to be in charge of a central bank in the United States.
She was also the first Democrat to be in charge of a central bank since Paul Volcker in 1979. The Federal Reserve raised its key interest rate for the first time since 2006 while Yellen was in charge.
Just before leaving office in 2018, Yellen made an unprecedented move when she imposed sanctions on Wells Fargo in response to systemic consumer abuses.
Overall, Yellen is considered one of the Federal Reserve’s most successful chairs. Her tenure saw the unemployment rate drop from 6.7 per cent to 4.1 per cent, the lowest in 17 years.
Economic Philosophy
Yellen’s economic philosophy is mostly about unemployment and favours lower interest rates from the Federal Reserve. Yellen has also said that she wants to raise taxes, cut spending on retirement, and get rid of the debt ceiling.
She said that this was necessary to keep the government from going bankrupt in late 2021. She has also been in favour of making financial rules more strict.
Honours
Yellen has won a lot of awards for her work in both academia and politics over the course of her career. She has honorary degrees from Bard College, New York University, the University of Warwick, Tel Aviv University, and the University of Pennsylvania.
Yellen has also been a member of or had a fellowship with the National Bureau of Economic Research, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the National Association for Business Economics.
Her accolades include the Wilbur Cross Medal from Yale University, the President’s Medal from Brown University, and the Paul H. Douglas Award for Ethics in Government from the Institute of Government and Public Affairs.
Personal Life
In 1978, Yellen married fellow economist George Akerlof, whom she had met in the cafeteria of the Federal Reserve. For two years, the pair lived in London, where Akerlof taught at the London School of Economics; more recently, he has taught at Georgetown University and the University of California, Berkeley.
Together, Yellen and Akerlof have a son named Robert. He is an associate professor of economics at the University of Warwick.
Yellen and Akerlof have frequently collaborated on research, particularly on such subjects as poverty and unemployment. Additionally, Yellen is a philatelist, and reportedly has a postage stamp collection estimated to be worth between $15,000 and $50,000.
Net Worth
According to forbes, Janet Yellen is an economist from the U.S. She is worth about $20 million dollars.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Janet Yellen?
Janet Yellen is an economist from the United States.
Who Does Janet Yellen Live With?
Janet Yellen’s husband’s name is George Akerlof.
Where Did Dr Janet Yellen Go to College?
Brown University
Yellen graduated summa cum laude in economics from Brown University (1967) and received a Ph. D. in economics from Yale University (1971). Then, from 1968 to 1976, she was an assistant professor of economics at Harvard University.
