Devah Iwalani Pager was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on March 1, 1972. She received a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1993; a master's degree in sociology from the University of Cape Town in 1996; a second master's from Stanford University in 1997; and a doctorate in sociology from the University of Wisconsin in 2002.
She became a sociologist best known for measuring and documenting racial discrimination in the labor market and in the criminal justice system. Her doctoral dissertation found that employers were more likely to hire a white man, even if he had a felony conviction, than a black man with no criminal record. Her dissertation became a book entitled Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration. She taught at Princeton University and Harvard University. She died from pancreatic cancer on November 2, 2018 at the age of 46.
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