Social Sciences
Explore faculty and student work in economics, sociology, political science, anthropology, and other disciplines shaping our understanding of society.
America’s National Parks Are a $56 Billion Economic Engine
Harvard’s Linda Bilmes on measuring the economic value of public lands
The Off-Kilter Economy
Reckoning with inflation and its remedies
Where We Went Wrong
A sweeping history of society and the economy in the twentieth century
Will Global Democracy Survive?
Scholars on the current rise of fascism, domestically and abroad
America’s Riven Politics
A Harvard Magazine Q & A with Evan Osnos ’98, author of Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury
Seeking the First Speakers of Indo-European Language
Ancient DNA sheds new light on the origins of a lingua franca.
Who Should Drive an Electric Vehicle?
Targeting the wrong buyers—and producing more greenhouse-gas emissions
Origins of the Urban Housing Crisis
The high cost of environmental mandates, historic-preservation rules, and other good intentions
The Causes of Long COVID
Trying to understand infections’ persistent effects—and to develop cures
Public Health Messaging in a Pandemic
How much intervention is too much, or not enough, when addressing a politically and socially diverse population?
by Isabel Mehta
Fracking’s Deadly Toll
Harvard researchers find that fracking shortens the lives of elderly Americans living downwind of unconventional oil and gas wells.