Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh

Who is Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh?

Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh is an Indian American sociologist and urban ethnographer. Born in India, he is a professor of sociology and African-American studies at Columbia University. He is a board member at Philadelphia-based nonprofit Public/Private Ventures. In his work, Venkatesh has documented criminal gangs and the drug trade, and has written about the dynamics of the underground economy including street prostitution, contributing his findings to the research of economics professor Steven Levitt.

Venkatesh received a B.A. in mathematics from the University of California, San Diego in 1988. He attended graduate school at the University of Chicago where he studied under Professor William Julius Wilson, focusing on Robert Taylor Homes, a housing project in Chicago about which he wrote a book, American Project. Venkatesh also authored a 2008 book titled, Gang Leader For A Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes To The Streets. The book chronicles the life of urban poor in Chicago, particularly the Robert Taylor Homes and the gang, Black Kings, whose leader J.T. he befriended. He found that most foot soldiers in drug gangs make only $3.30 an hour.

In a separate research project with Steven Levitt, he hired former sex workers to track working street prostitutes in Chicago, finding that they make about $30–$35 an hour, with those working with pimps making more and suffering fewer arrests. A street prostitute was arrested about once per 450 sexual encounters. Condoms were used in only 20% of the contacts.