Jeffrey David Sachs (/sæks/ SAKS; born November 5, 1954)^[4] is an American economist, academic, public policy analyst, and former director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, where he holds the title of University Professor.^[5][6] He is known for his work on sustainable development, economic development, and the fight to end poverty.^[7]

Sachs is Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.^[8] 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. From 2001 to 2018, Sachs served as 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),^[9] 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.^[9][10]

Sachs is co-founder and chief strategist of Millennium Promise Alliance, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending extreme poverty and hunger that has come under scrutiny from critics^[11] and was the subject of a book by the journalist Nina Munk. From 2002 to 2006, he was director of the United Nations Millennium Project‘s work on the MDGs. He is co-editor of the World Happiness Report with John F. Helliwell and Richard Layard. 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.^[12] Sachs has written several books and received several awards. He has been criticized for his views on economics and on the origin of COVID-19.

Early life and education

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.^[13] His family is Jewish.^[14] He graduated from Oak Park High School and attended Harvard College, where he received his Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude, in 1976.^[15] 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,^[16] and was invited to join the Harvard Society of Fellows while still a Harvard graduate student.^[17]