Age, Biography and Wiki
Jeffrey David Sachs was born on November 5, 1954. He is an American economist and public policy analyst, currently a professor at Columbia University. Sachs has been involved in various high-profile roles, including previously serving as the director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University. His work focuses on sustainable development and global health, making him a prominent figure in international economic policy.
| Occupation | Economist |
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| Date of Birth | 5 November 1954 |
| Age | 70 Years |
| Birth Place | Oak Park, Michigan, U.S. |
| Horoscope | Scorpio |
| Country | U.S |
Height, Weight & Measurements
Unfortunately, detailed information about Jeffrey Sachs' height and weight is not publicly available. This lack of data is common for public figures not primarily known for their physical appearance or entertainment careers.
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Dating & Relationship Status
While there is extensive information about Jeffrey Sachs' professional life, specific details about his personal relationships or marital status are not widely discussed in public sources. His focus on public policy and global development often overshadows personal life details.
In June 2020, Sachs said the targeting of Huawei by the US was not solely about security. In their 2020 book Hidden Hand, Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg commented on one of Sachs's articles in which he accused the U.S. government of maligning Huawei under hypocritical pretenses. Hamilton and Ohlberg wrote that Sachs's article would be more meaningful and influential if he did not have a close relationship with Huawei, including his previous endorsement of the company's "vision of our shared digital future." The authors also alleged that Sachs has ties to a number of Chinese state bodies and the private energy corporation CEFC China Energy for which he has spoken.
In 2017, Sachs and his wife were the joint recipients of the first World Sustainability Award. In 2015, Sachs was awarded the Blue Planet Prize for his contributions to solving global environmental problems.
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| Husband | Sonia Ehrlich Sachs |
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Net Worth and Salary
As of early 2025, Jeffrey Sachs' estimated net worth is approximately $40 million. This figure reflects his successful career as an economist, author, and professor, as well as any business or investment ventures he may be involved in. His salary is likely substantial, given his senior positions at prestigious institutions, but specific figures are not publicly disclosed.
Sachs suggests that with improved seeds, irrigation and fertilizer, the crop yields in Africa and other places with subsistence farming can be increased from 1 ton per hectare to 3 to 5 tons per hectare. He said that increased harvests would significantly increase the income of subsistence farmers, thereby reducing poverty. Sachs does not believe that increased aid is the only solution. He also supports establishing credit and microloan programs which are often lacking in impoverished areas. Sachs advocates the distribution of free insecticide-treated bed nets to combat malaria. The economic impact of malaria has been estimated to cost Africa $12 billion per year. Sachs estimates that malaria can be controlled for $3 billion per year, therefore suggesting that anti-malaria projects would be an economically justified investment.
Following the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000, Sachs chaired the WHO Commission on Macroeconomics and Health (2000–2001) which played a pivotal role in scaling up the financing of health care and disease control in the low-income countries to support MDGs 4, 5 and 6. He worked with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2000–2001 to design and launch The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. He also worked with senior officials of the George W. Bush administration to develop the PEPFAR program to fight HIV/AIDS and the PMI to fight malaria. On behalf of Annan, from 2002 to 2006 he chaired the UN Millennium Project which was tasked with developing a concrete action plan to achieve the MDGs. The UN General Assembly adopted the key recommendations of the UN Millennium Project at a special session in September 2005.
Career, Business and Investments
Sachs' career is marked by significant contributions to economics and international development:
- Academic Career: He is a professor at Columbia University and has held various leadership roles, including the directorship of The Earth Institute.
- Public Policy: Sachs has been extensively involved in global health and sustainable development initiatives, advocating for policies that address poverty and inequality.
- Author and Educator: He is a bestselling author and has been recognized for his educational innovations in economics.
- Business and Investments: While specific business investments are not detailed, his economic expertise likely influences his investment choices.
From 2001 to 2018, Sachs was special advisor to the UN Secretary General, and held the same position under the previous UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and prior to 2016 a similar advisory position related to the earlier Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), eight internationally sanctioned objectives to reduce extreme poverty, hunger and disease by 2015. In connection with the MDGs, he had first been appointed special adviser to the UN Secretary-General in 2002 during the term of Kofi Annan.
Sachs is co-founder and chief strategist of Millennium Promise Alliance, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending extreme poverty and hunger. From 2002 to 2006, he was director of the United Nations Millennium Project's work on the MDGs. In 2010, he became a commissioner for the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development, whose stated aim is to boost the importance of broadband internet in international policy. Sachs has written several books and received several awards. His views on economics, on the origin of COVID-19, and on the Russian invasion of Ukraine have garnered attention and criticism.
In 1989, Sachs advised Poland's anticommunist Solidarity movement and the government of Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki. He wrote a comprehensive plan for the transition from central planning to a market economy which became incorporated into Poland's reform program led by Finance Minister Leszek Balcerowicz. Sachs was the main architect of Poland's debt reduction operation. Sachs and IMF economist David Lipton advised on the rapid conversion of all property and assets from public to private ownership. Closure of many uncompetitive factories ensued. In Poland, Sachs was firmly on the side of rapid transition to capitalism. At first, he proposed American-style corporate structures, with professional managers answering to many shareholders and a large economic role for stock markets. That did not bode well with the Polish authorities, but he then proposed that large blocks of the shares of privatized companies be placed in the hands of private banks. As a result, there were some economic shortages and inflation, but prices in Poland eventually stabilized. The government of Poland awarded Sachs one of its highest honors in 1999, the Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit. He also received an honorary doctorate from the Kraków University of Economics. Based on Poland's success, his advice was sought first by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and by his successor, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, on the transition of the USSR/Russia to a market economy.
Sachs has criticized the International Monetary Fund and its policies around the world and blamed international bankers for what he says is a pattern of ineffective investment strategies.
Social Network
Sachs maintains a significant presence in academic and policy circles but does not have a widely documented social media presence. His influence is more pronounced through his writings, public lectures, and policy recommendations than through traditional social media platforms.
Since his work in post-communist countries, Sachs has turned to global issues of economic development, poverty alleviation, health and aid policy and environmental sustainability. He has written extensively on climate change, disease control and globalization. Since 1995, he has been engaged in efforts to alleviate poverty in Africa. According to New York Magazine, "Sachs's ambitions are hard to overstate... 'His ultimate goal is to change the world—to 'bend history', as he once said, quoting Robert F. Kennedy', wrote Nina Munk in The Idealist, a biography of Sachs. By the early aughts, he had risen from wonky academic to celebrity public intellectual. According to Munk, people in Sachs's inner circle affectionately called him a 'shit disturber', someone whose ego was offset by a selfless genius and a penchant for challenging orthodoxies. 'There's a certain messianic quality about him', George Soros, one of his patrons, told Munk."
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Sachs said the COVID-19 lab leak theory, which posited the SARS-CoV-2 virus was released from a Chinese laboratory, was "reckless and dangerous," and said that right-wing politicians pointing fingers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology could "push the world to conflict... Neither the biology nor chronology support the laboratory-release story".
William Easterly, a professor of economics at New York University, reviewed The End of Poverty for the Washington Post, calling Sachs's poverty eradication plan "a sort of Great Leap Forward". According to Easterly's cross-country statistical analysis in his book The White Man's Burden, from 1985 to 2006, "When we control both for initial poverty and for bad government, it is bad government that explains the slower growth. We cannot statistically discern any effect of initial poverty on subsequent growth once we control for bad government. This is still true if we limit the definition of bad government to corruption alone." Easterly deems the massive aid proposed by Sachs to be ineffective, as its effect will be hampered by bad governance and/or corruption.
In December 2018, Meng Wanzhou, Chief Financial Officer of Huawei, was arrested in Canada at the request of the U.S., which was seeking her extradition to face charges of allegedly violating sanctions against Iran. Soon after Meng's arrest, Sachs wrote an article in which he said her arrest was part of efforts to contain China and accused the U.S. of hypocrisy for seeking her extradition. He wrote that none of the executives of several U.S. companies which had been fined for sanctions violations were arrested. After he was criticized for the article, Sachs closed his Twitter account, which had 260,000 followers. Isaac Stone Fish, a senior fellow at Asia Society, wrote that Sachs had written a foreword to a Huawei position paper, and asked if Sachs had been paid by Huawei. Sachs said he had not been paid for the work.
Education
Jeffrey Sachs received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University and later earned his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard as well. His educational background has been instrumental in shaping his career as a leading economist and policy analyst.
Jeffrey David Sachs (born November 5, 1954) is an American economist and public policy analyst who is a professor at Columbia University, where he was formerly director of The Earth Institute. He worked on the topics of sustainable development and economic development.
Sachs is director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He is an SDG Advocate for United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of 17 global goals adopted at a UN summit meeting in September 2015.
Sachs was raised in Oak Park, Michigan, in the Detroit metro area, and is the son of Joan (née Abrams) and Theodore Sachs, a labor lawyer. His family is Jewish. He graduated from Oak Park High School and attended Harvard College, where he received his Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude, in 1976. He went on to receive his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard with his thesis titled Factor Costs and Macroeconomic Adjustment in the Open Economy: Theory and Evidence, and was invited to join the Harvard Society of Fellows while still a Harvard graduate student.
In 1980, Sachs joined the Harvard faculty as an assistant professor, and was promoted to associate professor in 1982. A year later at the age of 28, he became a professor of economics with tenure at Harvard.
During the next 19 years at Harvard, Sachs became the Galen L. Stone Professor of International Trade, director of the Harvard Institute for International Development (1995–1999) and director of the Center for International Development at Harvard Kennedy School (1999–2002).
Sachs is the director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. He is university professor at Columbia University. From 2002 to 2016, Sachs was director of the Earth Institute of Columbia University, a university-wide organization, with an interdisciplinary approach to addressing complex issues facing the Earth, in support of sustainable development. Sachs's classes are taught at the School of International and Public Affairs and the Mailman School of Public Health, and his course "Challenges of Sustainable Development" is taught at the undergraduate level.
In spring 2020, Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, appointed Sachs as chair of its COVID-19 Commission, whose goals were to provide recommendations for public health policy and improve the practice of medicine. Sachs set up a number of task forces, including one on the origins of the virus. Sachs appointed British American disease ecologist Peter Daszak, a colleague of Sachs's at Columbia, to head this task force, two weeks after the Trump administration prematurely ended a federal grant supporting a project led by Daszak, EcoHealth Alliance, which worked with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Sachs later came to believe that Daszak had a conflict of interest due to his connections to the Wuhan lab and the nature of the lab's research. Richard Ebright, chemical biologist at Rutgers University, called the commission an "entirely Potemkin commission" in the conservative National Review. As Sachs became increasingly drawn to the lab leak theory, he came into conflict with Daszak and his task force. Daszak left as chair of the taskforce in June 2021 and Sachs disbanded the group in September that year.
In July 2022, Sachs said he was "pretty convinced," though "not sure" that COVID-19 came out of "U.S. lab biotechnology," which is considered by the European Union to be COVID-19 disinformation by China. While Sachs has leanings toward the possibility of a virus leak from a "U.S.-backed laboratory research program," he has stated that "A natural spillover is also possible, of course. Both hypotheses are viable at this stage."
During a January 2021 interview, despite the interviewer's repeated prompting, Sachs did not answer questions about China's repression of Uyghur people and instead referred to Jesus' parable about the Mote and the Beam, referring to "huge human rights abuses committed by the U.S.". Subsequently, 19 advocacy and rights groups jointly wrote a letter to Columbia University questioning Sachs's comments. The letter's signatories wrote that Sachs took the same stance as China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a digression to the history of U.S. rights violations as a way to avoid discussions of China's mistreatment of Uyghurs. The rights groups went on to say that Sachs "betrayed his institution's mission" by trivializing the perspective of those who were oppressed by the Chinese government. Stephan Richter, editor-in-chief at The Globalist, and J.D. Bindenagel, a former U.S. ambassador, wrote that Sachs was "actively agitating(!) for a classic Communist propaganda ploy".
In 1993, the New York Times called Sachs "probably the most important economist in the world." In 2005, Sachs received the Sargent Shriver Award for Equal Justice. In 2007, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian honor bestowed by the government of India. Also in 2007, he received the Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution International Advocate for Peace Award and the Centennial Medal from the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for his contributions to society.
From 2000 to 2001, Sachs was chairman of the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health of the World Health Organization (WHO) and from 1999 to 2000 he was a member of the International Financial Institution Advisory Commission established by the United States Congress. Sachs has been an adviser to the WHO, the World Bank, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations Development Program. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Harvard Society of Fellows, the Fellows of the World Econometric Society, the Brookings Panel of Economists, the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Board of Advisers of the Chinese Economists Society, among other international organizations. Sachs is also the first holder of the Royal Professor Ungku Aziz Chair in Poverty Studies at the Centre for Poverty and Development Studies at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for 2007–2009. He holds an honorary professorship at the Universidad del Pacifico in Peru. He has lectured at the London School of Economics, the University of Oxford and Yale University and in Tel Aviv University and Jakarta.
In September 2008, Vanity Fair ranked Sachs 98th on its list of 100 members of the New Establishment. In July 2009, Sachs became a member of the Netherlands Development Organization's International Advisory Board. In 2009, Princeton University's American Whig-Cliosophic Society awarded Sachs the James Madison Award for Distinguished Public Service.