Facebook has been sharing our data for months to help study income inequality

Enlarge / Scenes of daily work and life at Facebook, Inc. USA Headquarters in Menlo Park, California. Facebook employees and visitors walk along the main "Hacker Way" pathway between the buildings. (credit: Kim Kulish/Corbis via Getty Images)

Facebook has agreed to give a hotshot Stanford economist unprecedented access to its internal data as a way to better understand income disparity in the United States.

According to Politico, which first broke the news on Tuesday morning, the investigation will be led by Raj Chetty, who won a 2012 MacArthur Genius grant and is well-known for his analysis of America's social and economic problems. Facebook did not immediately respond to Ars' request for comment, but the company "confirmed the broad contours of its partnership with Chetty" to Politico.

"We're using social networks, and measuring interactions there, to understand the role of social capital much better than we've been able to," Chetty told the political news site in January.

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