Milton

Friedman Biography
A comprehensive biography of Milton Friedman with information
on his childhood and life.
Quick Facts
Famous as

Economist, Statistician

Nationality

American

Religion

Jewish

Born on

31 July 1912

Zodiac Sign

Leo

Born in

Brooklyn, New York, USA

Died on

16 November 2006

Place of
death

San Francisco, California, USA

Father

Jeno" Friedman

Mother

Sra Landau

Spouse:

Rose

Children

David, Janet

Education

University of Chicago (1933), Rutgers

University (1932), Rahway High School (1928),
Columbia University

Founder/CoFounder

T he Foundation for Educational Choice

Quick Facts
Works &
Achievements

Awards

Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics

John Bates Clark Medal (1951)
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics (1976)
Presidential Medal of Freedom (1988)
National Medal of Science (1988)

Milton Friedman was a well-known American economist and

professor of statistics at the University of Chicago. He received
the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He has made
his mark among other economists and scholars and is best
known for his theoretical and empirical research work in
consumption analysis, monetary history and theory for
demonstrating the complexity of stabilization policy. He acted as
an economic advisor to the U.S. President Ronald Reagan. His
political philosophy that propagated the virtues of a free market
economic system with little intervention by government is
practiced by many governments. His works greatly influenced
the research agenda. He also served as the leader of the
Chicago school of economics under the University of Chicago.
Milton Friedman's works include monographs, books, scholarly
articles, papers, magazine columns, television programs,
videos, and lectures. He wrote on a variety of topics on
microeconomics, macroeconomics, economic history, and public

policy issues. Originally a Keynesian supporter of the New Deal,

he insisted on the government intervention in the economy. He
then founded The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice.
The Economist called him "the most influential economist of the
second half of the 20th centurypossibly of all of it". Friedman
died at the age of 94 on 16th November 2006.
Milton Frie dm an Childhood
st
Milton Friedman was born on 31 July, 1912 in Brooklyn, New
York. He was born to Jen Friedman and Sra Landau. Both his
parents were Jewish immigrants from Beregszsz in Hungary
(now Berehove, part of Ukraine). Both of them worked as dry
goods merchants. Just after his birth, his family shifted to settle
in Rahway, New Jersey.
Education and Early Life
Milton Friedman was a good and talented student. He did his
graduation from Rahway High School in 1928, a few days before
his 16th birthday. He graduated from Rutgers University in New
Jersey.
During this period, Friedman was influenced and found
inspiration in two of his economics professors, Arthur F. Burns
and Homer Jones. Both of them convinced him of the fact that
modern economics could help end the Great Depression.
Friedman was highly influenced by Jacob Viner, Frank Knight,
and Henry Simons. Between the periods from 1933 to 1934, he
did his fellowship at Columbia University and there he did his
study of statistics under renowned statistician and economist
Harold Hotelling. He then went back to Chicago and spent the
rest of the years working as a research assistant for Henry
Schultz from the period 1934 until 1935. He then did his work
the Theory and M easurement of Demand. It was during this time
that Friedman formed a long lasting friendship with friends for
life George Stigler and W. Allen Wallis.
Public Se rv ice Care e r

Initially, Friedman failed to get employment in the academic

field. Failing to get employed he followed his friend W. Allen
Wallis to Washington. During this time, Franklin D. Roosevelt's
New Deal proved to be "a lifesaver" for many young economists.
Friedman said he and his wife "regarded the job-creation
programs such as the WPA, CCC, and PWA appropriate
responses to the critical situation", but not "the price- and wagefixing measures of the National Recovery Administration and the
Agricultural Adjustment Administration". He was of the opinion
that all government intervention was associated with the New
Deal and termed it "the wrong cure for the wrong disease". He
stressed on the point that the money supply should have been
expanded, instead of contracted. In M onetary Hi story of the
Uni ted States, written by Friedman and Anna Schwartz, they
debated that the Great Depression was caused by monetary
contraction, which was the consequence of poor policymaking
by the Federal Reserve and the continuous crises in the
banking system.
In 1935, he started his work on the National Resources
Committee, which was carried on a large consumer budget
survey. T he ideas of this project came from his Theory of the
Consumpti on Functi on. In 1937, Friedman began employment
with the National Bureau of Economic Research to assist Simon
Kuznets in his work on professional income. T his work resulted
in their co-authored publication Incomes from Independent
Professi onal Practi ce, which introduced the concepts of
permanent and transitory income and gave light on the major
component of the Permanent Income Hypothesis. Friedman
worked on it more elaborately in the 1950s.
In 1940, Friedman served as an assistant professor of
Economics at the University of WisconsinMadison. T here he
faced antisemitism in the Department of Economics and decided
to return to government service. From 1941 to 1943, Friedman
worked on wartime tax policy for the Federal Government. He
served as an advisory head to the senior officials of the United

States Department of Treasury. In 1942, he advocated the

Keynesian policy of taxation, and helped in inventing the payroll
withholding tax system.
Acade m ic Care e r
In 1943, Friedman served in the Division of War Research at
Columbia University (headed by W. Allen Wallis and Harold
Hotelling). T here he spent the rest of the war years working as
a mathematics statistician. His job involved looking into the
problems of weapons design, military tactics, and metallurgical
experiments. In 1945, Friedman submitted his research work on
t h e Incomes from Independent Professi onal Practi ce coauthored by Kuznets to Columbia University as part his doctoral
dissertation. T he university awarded him a Ph.D. in 1946.
Friedman spent his academic years from 1945 to 1946 teaching
at the University of Minnesota where his friend George Stigler
was also employed.
He then accepted an offer to teach economic theory in 1946 at
the University of Chicago. It was a position opened by departure
of his former professor Jacob Viner to Princeton University.
Friedman served the University of Chicago for the next 30 years
and helped in building an intellectual community that has been
the starting point for many budding Nobel Prize winners. It is
collectively known as the Chicago School of Economics.
Friedman later joined the National Bureau of Economic
Research. He then initiated the "Workshop in Money and
Banking" (the "Chicago Workshop") and promoted the revival of
monetary studies. In the latter half of the 1940s, Friedman
collaborated with Anna Schwartz and economic historian at the
Bureau. In 1963, he co-authored a book with Schwartz, A
M onetary Hi story of the Uni ted States, 18671960.
Between the period 1954 to 1955, Friedman spent the academic
year as a Fulbright Visiting Fellow at Gonville and Caius

College, Cambridge. Later his weekly columns for Newsweek

magazine (196684) were well acclaimed and were successful
in influencing the political and business class.
Friedman also acted as an economic adviser to the Republican
Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in 1964, he lost to
Lyndon Johns.
Nobe l Me m orial Prize and Re tire m e nt
In 1976 Friedman was honored with the Nobel Memorial Prize in
Economics "for his achievements in the fields of consumption
analysis, monetary history and theory and for his demonstration
of the complexity of stabilization policy". He retired from the
University of Chicago in 1977, at age 65, serving as a teacher
for 30 years. He and his wife moved to San Francisco. He was
then affiliated with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University
in 1977. Friedman was part of the television program on the
economic and social philosophy, Free to Choose Network for the
next three years. In 1980, the ten-part series was broadcasted
by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Free to Choose also
went on to become a bestseller in the non-fiction category in
1980. It was then translated into 14 foreign languages.
Friedman also served as the unofficial adviser to Ronald
Reagan in 1980 and served in the President's Economic Policy
Advisory Board during Reagans Administration. In 1988, he was
honored with the National Medal of Science along with the
Presidential Medal of Freedom. In the 1980s and 1990s,
Friedman frequently appeared on television and wrote editorials.
He also traveled extensively to Eastern Europe and China.
Contributions in the Fie ld of Econom ics
Friedman is known for his quantity theory of money. Friedman
co-authored A M onetary Hi story of the Uni ted States (1963)
with Anna Schwartz and did several regression studies with
David Meiselman in the 1960s. He was the main propagator of
the monetarist school of economics. He stated that price
inflation and the money supply go hand in hand.

Friedman rejected the use of fiscal policy as a tool of demand

management. He wrote extensively on the Great Depression and
termed the Great Contraction. He also gained prominence for
his work on the consumption function, the permanent income
hypothesis (1957). His other contributions include his critique of
the Phillips curve and the concept of the natural rate of
unemployment (1968). He wrote the essay "T he Methodology of
Positive Economics" in 1953.
Contributions in the Fie ld of Statistics
His most notable statistical contributions are sequential
sampling technique which became, in the words of The New
Pal grave Di cti onary of Economi cs, 'the standard analysis of
quality control inspection.'
Public Policy Positions
He proposed "T he Role of Government in Education" in 1955. In
1996 Friedman, along with his wife, founded the Foundation for
Educational Choice. He was a major propagator of the volunteer
military.
He then served as a member of President Reagan's Economic
Policy Advisory Board in 1981 again in 1988; he won the
Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of
Science.
Marriage
He got married to his economist wife Rose Director in Chicago.
T hey had two childrenJanet and David. Janet grew up to
become a philosopher and his son David became an anarchocapitalist economist.
De ath
Friedman died of heart failure at the age of 94 years in San
Francisco on November 16, 2006.