Winnie van Dijk is an economist whose research uses large, linked data sets to study the causes and consequences of poverty in high-income countries. Professor Van Dijk's work combines frontier econometric methods with the collection and curation of new data sets—including court filings, information collected by public agencies, surveys, and credit reports—and aims to inform the design and evaluation of economic policies that are relevant to low-income households. Her research includes empirical studies of the causes and consequences of eviction, housing assistance, legal aid, school choice systems, and criminal records, as well as the determinants of representation of low-income households in academic research.
Professor Van Dijk is a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and she is affiliated with Opportunity Insights, the University of Chicago Inclusive Economy Lab, the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities, and CAGE. She graduated from the University of Chicago with a PhD in economics, and subsequently she was a Saieh Family Research Fellow at the Becker Friedman Institute and an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at Harvard. Before obtaining her PhD, she studied at the London School of Economics and at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.
