Ira Gang Obituary
Ira N. Gang passed away on Friday, July 24, 2026 at RWJ University Hospital in New Brunswick after a short illness. He was 71.
A Professor of Economics who specialized in Development Economics, he was a graduate of Johns Hopkins University, and received his PhD in Economics from Cornell University. He joined the faculty of Rutgers University in 1986 where he taught classes in Development, Education and Population Economics and graduate seminars in Topics in Development. Ira received tenure in 1992 and soon after became a full Professor. He published over 200 papers on development, migration and public policy, public choice, political economy and labor economics in leading economics journals. He was the founding editor of the Review of Development Economics, and was an Associate Editor/Editorial Board member of several journals, including the Journal of Population Economics and was a Research Fellow at IZA Bonn, Glo, the University of Regensburg, and several other academic institutions. He often carried around with him a paper in the works wherever he went and his shirts often were marked by ink-stained pockets. He was a recipient of both Fulbright and Alexander von Humboldt fellowships during his career.
Ira greatly enjoyed mentoring undergraduate and graduate students throughout their years in school and beyond and loved both his own research and teaching. One of his mentees wrote in the preface of his dissertation that Ira "taught me to truly enjoy economics and made it fun." His work took him to India, Germany, Israel, England and Tajikistan as well as other countries. He was a visiting scholar at the University of Manchester (England); the Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi; WIDER, Helsinki; and taught specialized graduate classes at Columbia University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania and Duke University over the course of his career. After the fall of the Berlin Wall he spent many summers visiting the Charles University in Prague mentoring economics students on the 'new' economics. The events of the past several years had him delivering rather wonkish explanations of tariffs and other issues at the dinner table. Though he appreciated art - and studied it as an undergraduate - he truly loved the study of economics.
As colleagues learn of his passing, everyone has used the word "kindness" to describe Ira. Their tributes contain such sentences as: "one of the kindest, most decent colleagues I know," and "someone who was an unforgettable support for us and one of the kindest people I have ever known."
Think of him if you share his white noise tv movies, pre-code movies with Barbara Stanwyck or the musicals of Fred and Ginger. He leaves behind a dream unfinished tome entitled "Coffee Shops of the Great Museums of the World," notes for which he jokingly took while accompanying his wife to museums. Have a cup of good strong black coffee, preferably Peets, in his memory.
Most of all, Ira took great joy and pleasure in the accomplishments of his sons. He is survived by his wife of 36 years, Gail Alterman; his sons Joshua and Eli and daughter-in-law Laurie; as well as his sister Mollye Noah and her husband Richard.
If you are able, please donate blood or platelets in his memory. Link: https://www.rwjbh.org/treatment- care/blood-donation/ In lieu of that he would ask you to support Women's Health Issues and abortion rights (such as https://www.ncjw.org/about/ ) or any liberal Democratic issue of your choice.
London, March 2024 The Girl in Blue - Henrietta - holds the hand of her deceased baby brother, Thomas, on her right. Henrietta later marries and names her child - Thomas Malthus - after her brother. IYKYK, or you took his class on Population Economics. William Hogarth, The Honorable Graham Children, 1742 National Gallery, London
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/william-hogarth-the-graham-children