Charles Mills Tiebout (1924-1968) was born in Norwalk, Connecticut to parents Harry Morgan Tiebout and Ethel Mae Mills. He received his B.A. from Wesleyan University in 1950 before beginning his M.A. and later Ph.D. at the University of Michigan. From 1954-1958, Tiebout served as a lecturer and assistant professor of cconomic at Western University in Chicago. He went on to work as an assistant and then associate professor of economic at the University of California, Los Angeles from 1958-1962.

In 1962 he began working as a professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Washington, a position he held until his death. He also taught in the Department of Geography as the co-director for the Center for Urban and Regional Studies.

Tiebout combined his interests in economics and geography where they intersected with other fields such as political science. He developed the Tiebout model, also known as Tiebout sorting or Tiebout migration, which describes a non-political solution to the free-rider problem in local politics. The theory was first discussed in his 1956 article entitled "A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures" written in the Journal of Political Economy. Throughout his career, he published multiple articles with much of his research focusing on the concept of foot voting and metropolitan economic areas.

Tiebout wrote for the Center for Metropolitan Studies which was associated with Harvard and funded by the Ford Foundation. He also served on multiple advisory committees such as the Regional Economics Advisory Committee for the United States Department of Commerce beginning in 1964.

Charles M. Tiebout died suddenly on January 16th, 1968 of a heart attack. He was 43.