Herbert Gintis was born February 11, 1940, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to parents Gerson (furniture retailer) and Shirley (Malena) Gintis. He married Marci Susan Greisler, an artist, on August 26, 1961; they have one son, Daniel Moses. Gintis earned his bachelor's degree in 1961 from the University of Pennsylvania. In the same year he began graduate school at Harvard University, completing his master's degree in 1962 and his doctorate in 1969. Gintis entered Harvard intending to study mathematics; however, he was deeply influenced by the events of the 1960s, including the anti-war movement, the counter-culture movement, and the Civil Rights Movement. Subsequently he abandoned his mathematical dissertation to pursue economics, a field he believed was better able to address issues that interested him.

With his course now set on economics, Gintis began being a critic of traditional economic theory, as he explains in his autobiographical contribution in A Biographical Dictionary of Dissenting Economists: "As a graduate...