Category: Expert Focus

Expert Focus: Latino leaders in economics and a call for more data and research about Latinos and Hispanics

Posted on by Emilie Openchowski
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Equitable Growth is committed to building a community of scholars working to understand how inequality affects broadly shared growth and stability. To that end, we have created the monthly series, “Expert Focus.” This series highlights scholars in the Equitable Growth network and beyond who are at the frontier of social science research. We encourage you to learn more about both the researchers featured below and our broader network of experts.

In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, this installment of Expert Focus highlights Latino leaders in economics, the need for more, and more accurate, data about Hispanics and Latinos, and research that applies the intersectionality of race, ethnicity, and gender from among Equitable Growth’s academic community and beyond.

Many Latino leaders call for more accurate and representative research about Latinos. More and better data will enhance researchers’ ability to compare and/or distinguish Latinos from other groups of diverse backgrounds in the United States, as well as understand differences within the Latino community. Similarly, scholars insist on adding more context to the use of different terms, such as Hispanic or Latino. Some note the invention of Latino and Hispanic terms, as well as the ethnoracial politics and the generational differences within the group in terms of how to self-identify. Other terms used by those in this group are Latinxs and Afro-Latinos.

In economics, one way Latino leaders have drawn Latinos and individuals from underrepresented backgrounds to the profession is through their participation in mentorship programs. Below, we highlight Latino leaders working at the American Economic Association and the American Society for Hispanic Economists, which originated alongside—and often collaborates with—the National Economic Association focused on Black economists. This year, Equitable Growth participated as a first-time host organization for the AEA Summer Training Program for experiential learning participants and the AEA Summer Economics Fellows Program to support efforts to diversify the profession.

Francisca Antman

The University of Colorado Boulder 

Francisca Antman is an associate professor of economics at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research focuses on Latinos, international migration, human capital investments, and the allocation of resources within households and families. Building from development and labor economics, her recent projects examine the impact of school desegregation on the educational progress of Hispanic Americans, the construction of racial and ethnic identity and related patterns of assimilation, the effects of immigration policies on undocumented immigrants, and the effects of migration on the elderly generation left behind in Mexico. For 6 years, Antman served on the American Economic Association Committee on the Status of Minority Groups in the Economics Profession. Currently, she is serving as the co-director of the committee’s mentoring program, a flagship AEA program to attract and retain underrepresented groups in the field of economics. The program focuses on providing mentorship to early career economists and facilitating networks between scholars at all stages as a tool to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in the economics profession.

Mónica García-Pérez

St. Cloud University

Mónica García-Pérez is a professor of economics at St. Cloud University. Her research concentrates on immigration, health economics, and labor economics. García-Pérez also is a co-author of an Equitable Growth working paper looking at credit scores and incarceration. A speaker at Equitable Growth’s Vision 2020 event, García-Pérez is also an active leader in various professional societies in economics. As past president of the American Society of Hispanic Economists, she wrote a solidarity statement in response to 2020’s historic events of discrimination, violence, and murder impacting underrepresented groups and individuals in the United States. In 2021, she served as faculty to support students interested in economics as a member of the AEA Summer Program and a fellow of the 2021 Reinventing Our Communities Cohort Program organized by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

Quote from Monica Garcia-Perez on the intergenerational effect of immigration

Mark Hugo López

Pew Research Center

Mark Hugo López is an economist and the director of race and ethnicity research at Pew Research Center. He is a major voice in Hispanic/Latino data research, having led the center’s Hispanic and Global Migration and Demography research agendas for more than a decade. Drawing from his expertise on global migration and demography, Hispanic trends, and race and ethnicity, López has authored reports and short pieces on the changing demographics of Latinos and Hispanics in the United States, including how this group is impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. At Pew Research Center, three focal areas of his work involve the Hispanic electorate, Hispanic identity, and immigration. López understands the importance of having more data on Latinos to understand the nuances and trends among them through the disaggregation of data and oversampling of Latinos in federal surveys, public opinion polls, and academic research. Similar to other scholars in this installment of Expert Focus, López’s research analyzes public opinion data around the nuanced intra-Hispanic or intra-Latino perspective of the varied uses of terms, such as Latinx. Prior to joining Pew Research, López was a research assistant professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy and research director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. López was a seminar speaker for the AEA Summer Program this year and serves as a mentor to the next generation of students in economics.

Quote from Mark Hugo Lopez on Hispanic identity

G. Cristina Mora

University of California, Berkeley

G. Cristina Mora is an associate professor of sociology and Chicano/Latino studies (by courtesy) and the co-director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Mora’s work highlights the need for and the important value of qualitative research for understanding the context of a specific race and ethnic group, as well as the need for the integration of this type of research into a larger debate about the disaggregation of data and oversampling, given the current racial makeup of the United States. In 2020, Mora oversaw the largest survey on the economic and health impacts of the coronavirus and COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, in California. The results shed light on the ethnoracial politics that exist within the Latino and Hispanic community and across generations. Along with Equitable Growth staff and others in academia and nonprofit sectors, Mora was part of the UNIDOSUS advisory board that published a 2021 report on closing the Latina wealth gap. The report documents the factors leading to persistent income and wealth gaps for Latinas.

Quote from G. Cristina Mora on Latino sense of self

Eileen V. Segarra Alméstica

The University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras campus

Eileen V. Segarra Alméstica is a professor of economics at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras campus and faculty at the Center for New Economy, an economic policy think tank. Her work is centered on gender, race, and employment from a labor economics perspective. After Hurricane Maria in 2017, Segarra Alméstica published research about the vulnerabilities in Puerto Rico given different sociodemographic contexts among residents—low-income, those with disabilities, children and adolescents, elderly groups, those facing inadequate housing or transportation, the unemployed, and residents of different immigrant status. In 2021, she was part of a Women’s History Month panel organized by Puerto Rico’s Economists Association on the state of affairs for Puerto Rican women’s workers. Currently, Segarra Alméstica is part of the “Observatorio de la Educación Pública en Puerto Rico” (English presentation), an affiliate of the “Centro de Estudios Multidisciplinarios de Gobierno y Asuntos Públicos,” or CEMGAP, at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras campus.

Quote from Eileen V. Segarra Almestica

Equitable Growth is building a network of experts across disciplines and at various stages in their career who can exchange ideas and ensure that research on inequality and broadly shared growth is relevant, accessible, and informative to both the policymaking process and future research agendas. Explore the ways you can connect with our network or take advantage of the support we offer here. 

Expert Focus: Presenting evidence for a stronger economic future at Equitable Growth’s 2021 policy conference

Posted on by Emilie Openchowski
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Equitable Growth is committed to building a community of scholars working to understand how inequality affects broadly shared growth and stability. To that end, we have created the monthly series, “Expert Focus.” This series highlights scholars in the Equitable Growth network and beyond who are at the frontier of social science research. We encourage you to learn more about both the researchers featured below and our broader network of experts.

The United States currently has a unique opportunity to enact structural changes that will have long-lasting and wide-ranging effects for workers and their families. Next week, Equitable Growth will host its biennial policy conference, virtually gathering experts from the academic, policymaking, and advocacy communities to discuss ways to capitalize on this moment and ensure strong and stable economic growth for all. Participants and speakers will discuss and debate the most pressing challenges facing the U.S. economy and society, from containing the spread of the coronavirus to mitigating the effects of climate change and addressing the roots and effects of structural and institutional racism.

The event, “Equitable Growth 2021: Evidence for a Stronger Economic Future,” will take place on September 20 and 21, featuring concurring sessions on a range of topics, among them Big Tech and competition, social infrastructure and policy, debt and consumer spending, and structural economic reforms. There will also be several fireside chats, opening remarks from our new President and CEO Michelle Holder, and a keynote address by U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh. This month’s installment of Expert Focus showcases the remarkable diversity and breadth of experience of just some of the many confirmed speakers and panelists at our conference next week. Many other featured speakers—including Michelle Holder, Carlos Fernando Avenancio-León, Lisa Cook, Dania V. Francis, and Hilary Hoynes—have been highlighted in previous Expert Focus entries.

To learn more about this year’s policy conference and see who else will be participating, visit the event page on our website, and click here to register to attend.

Equitable Growth 2021: Evidence for a Stronger Economic Future

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Olivier Blanchard

MIT; Peterson Institute for International Economics

Olivier Blanchard is Robert Solow professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Fred Bergsten senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He is a macroeconomist and has worked on a wide range of issues, including the role of monetary and fiscal policy, the nature of the labor market and the determinants of unemployment, and forces behind the global financial crisis. Blanchard has recently focused on the economic implications of the coronavirus and major future economic challenges, including climate change, inequality, and demographic change. In 2020, he contributed a column to Equitable Growth’s website on how policymakers can use fiscal policy to fight COVID-19 and counteract the coronavirus recession. At “Equitable Growth 2021,” Blanchard will participate in a session on envisioning a new economic future in the United States and designing structural reforms to achieve that vision.

Quote from Olivier Blanchard on public health and economic activity

Kristen Broady

Dillard University (on leave); The Brookings Institution

Kristen Broady is a fellow at The Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program. She is a professor of financial economics on leave at Dillard University in New Orleans, where she was formerly the dean of the college of business. Her areas of research include mortgage foreclosure risk, labor and automation, and racial health disparities. At Brookings she often writes about how Black workers are navigating the economy and the labor force in the United States and, since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, has focused on why Black Americans have experienced worse outcomes, particularly related to unemployment, education, and coronavirus relief programs. At “Equitable Growth 2021,” Broady will participate in a session on boosting aggregate demand and managing consumer debt burdens in the aftermath of the coronavirus recession.

Quote from Kristen Broady on the Black-White wealth gap

J.W. Mason

John Jay College, City University of New York; Roosevelt Institute

J.W. Mason is an associate professor of economics at John Jay College, City University of New York. His scholarly work centers on macroeconomic policy, finance, and debt. Mason is also a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and an economist with the Macroeconomic Analysis and Progressive Thought team, where he focuses on public spending and government debt, finance and monetary policy, and the importance of strong demand and full employment. His work seeks to expand the conversation around public management of the economy, pushing for more ambitious targets for macroeconomic policy and a wider set of tools to achieve those goals. In 2015, Mason received an Equitable Growth grant to examine how household debt affects the macroeconomy and has implications for monetary policy, and he has co-authored two working papers for our Working Paper series. At “Equitable Growth 2021,” Mason will participate in a session on boosting aggregate demand and managing consumer debt burdens in the aftermath of the coronavirus recession.

Quote from J.W. Mason on public spending

Atif Mian

Princeton University

Atif Mian is John H. Laporte, Jr. Class of 1967 professor of economics, public policy, and finance at Princeton University and director of the Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. Mian’s work studies the connections between finance and the macroeconomy. His 2014 book with Amir Sufi, House of Debt, explores how debt precipitated the Great Recession of 2007–2009. Mian is a member of Equitable Growth’s Steering Committee, guiding the organization’s efforts to study economic inequality, and in 2015, received an Equitable Growth grant, with Sufi, to expand their research on household debt as it relates to employment imbalances. He has written for Equitable Growth’s website, most recently on the macroeconomic consequences of rising inequality in the United States. At “Equitable Growth 2021,” Mian will participate in a session on boosting aggregate demand and managing consumer debt burdens in the aftermath of the coronavirus recession.

Quote from Atif Mian on macroeconomics

Fiona Scott Morton

Yale University

Fiona M. Scott Morton is the Theodore Nierenberg professor of economics at the Yale University School of Management. Her area of academic research is industrial organization, with a focus on empirical studies of competition in areas such as pricing, entry, and product differentiation. From 2011 to 2012, Scott Morton served as the deputy assistant attorney general for economics at the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where she helped enforce the nation’s antitrust laws. Scott Morton is a leading expert on antitrust and market competition, and has written extensively on the topic for Equitable Growth, including co-authoring a 2020 report with proposals for how the Biden administration could improve antitrust enforcement in the United States. She also received an Equitable Growth grant in 2018 to investigate the impact of antitrust enforcement on competition and innovation. At “Equitable Growth 2021,” Scott Morton will participate in a session on rebalancing Big Tech’s grip on the economy in order to boost innovation and spur competition.

Quote from Fiona Scott Morton on the lack of competition as a problem for the economy

William E. Spriggs

Howard University; AFL-CIO

Bill Spriggs is a professor in, and former chair of, the Department of Economics at Howard University. He also currently serves as chief economist to the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in the United States, chairing the Economic Policy Working Group for the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. His policy focus is on securing better pay and benefits for workers, and he has extensive experience in economic policy development, having previously served as assistant secretary for the Office of Policy at the U.S. Department of Labor from 2009 to 2012 under President Barack Obama. He frequently discusses the root causes and impacts of the Black-White employment divide in the U.S labor market, as well as how unions ameliorate wage disparities and stagnation and how government investment spurs economic growth. At “Equitable Growth 2021,” Spriggs will participate in a session on expanding U.S. social infrastructure to support workers and increase theirlabor force participation and productivity.

Quote from Bill Spriggs on Black unemployment

Equitable Growth is building a network of experts across disciplines and at various stages in their career who can exchange ideas and ensure that research on inequality and broadly shared growth is relevant, accessible, and informative to both the policymaking process and future research agendas. Explore the ways you can connect with our network or take advantage of the support we offer here. 

Expert Focus: Bridging the gap between policymakers and academics at our biennial policy conference

Posted on by Maria Monroe
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Equitable Growth is committed to building a community of scholars working to understand how inequality affects broadly shared growth and stability. To that end, we have created the monthly series, “Expert Focus.” This series highlights scholars in the Equitable Growth network and beyond who are at the frontier of social science research. We encourage you to learn more about both the researchers featured below and our broader network of experts.

Since our founding, Equitable Growth has sought to serve as a bridge between academia and the policymaking community in order to advance evidence-backed policy ideas that foster strong, stable, and broad-based economic growth. Part of our work in this area is reflected in our biennial policy conference, which brings together policymakers, academics, advocates, and thought leaders across issue areas and disciplines to discuss and share the best research-backed ideas for ensuring equitable growth across the U.S. economy.

On September 20 and 21, Equitable Growth is excited to host “Equitable Growth 2021: Evidence for a Stronger Economic Future,” a virtual event centered on using this unique moment in government to enact long-overdue structural changes. Not only has the coronavirus pandemic and ensuing recession exposed deep economic and societal fragilities in the United States—including along racial and gender lines—but policymakers also have a remarkable opportunity to address these longstanding challenges and create an economy that works for all Americans. As speakers continue to be confirmed for this year’s event, including U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh and U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), we take a look at the incredible contributions and expertise of participants from past conferences. This month’s installment of Expert Focus highlights speakers from the 2019 policy conference, “Vision 2020: Evidence for a Stronger Economy,” all of whom have vast experience in the policy, academic, and nonprofit sectors.

Equitable Growth 2021: Evidence for a Stronger Economic Future

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Byron Auguste

Opportunity@Work

Byron Auguste is the CEO and co-founder of Opportunity@Work, a nonprofit social enterprise that seeks to expand access to career opportunities so all Americans can work, learn, and earn to their full potential. In 2020, he co-authored a working paper that explores the extent to which workers who are skilled through alternative routes, or STARs, can help fill the skills gap—and how STARs are often left out of the high-wage workforce due to the increasing weight placed on (often unnecessary) higher education credentials, exacerbating wage inequality and reducing upward mobility. Auguste was previously deputy assistant to the president for economic policy and deputy director of the National Economic Council during the Obama administration, where he focused on job creation, labor markets, investments, and infrastructure, among other areas. He recently joined Equitable Growth’s Steering Committee to advise on the academic grants program and strengthen connections within its scholarly community as a leading voice on U.S. economic inequality and labor market outcomes. Learn more about Auguste’s work and his take on structural racism in the economy from his panel, split into two parts, at Equitable Growth’s 2019 policy conference.

Quote from Byron Auguste on the skills gap

Arindrajit Dube

University of Massachusetts Amherst

Arindrajit Dube is a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor. His work focuses on labor and health economics, public finance, and political economy, including research on competition and wage-setting in the U.S. labor market, monopsony, the impact of unions, fairness concerns in the workplace, and the role of unemployment insurance. He received an Equitable Growth grant in 2018 and has been a contributing author on several Equitable Growth projects, many of which focus on studying the effects of the minimum wage. Dube is currently a member of Equitable Growth’s Research Advisory Board, which provides critical support to the organization’s grantmaking and academic engagement. Learn more about Dube’s work and his take on monopsony power in the labor market via this fireside chat at Equitable Growth’s 2019 conference and his subsequent Vision 2020 essay.

Quote from Arin Dube on monopsony power

Karen Dynan

Harvard University

Karen Dynan is a professor of the practice of economics at Harvard University. She has previously held roles in the federal government and at nonprofits, having served as assistant secretary for economic policy and chief economist at the U.S. Department of the Treasury during the Obama administration, as vice president and co-director of the economic studies program at the Brookings Institution, and in senior roles at the Federal Reserve Board. Dynan’s research centers on macroeconomic and fiscal policy, consumer behavior, and household finances, and her focus on consumption and savings patterns shaped her approach to economic analysis and policymaking in the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2007–2009. Her breadth of experience across sectors is an asset to Equitable Growth’s Steering Committee, where Dynan not only supports the next generation of scholars but also guides the organization’s efforts to study economic inequality and to ensure strong and stable growth through informed policy choices. Learn more about Dynan’s work and her perspective on the effects of inequality on macroeconomics from Equitable Growth’s 2019 conference, broken into two parts.

Quote from Karen Dynan on households struggling to save

Bradley Hardy

Georgetown University

Bradley Hardy is an associate professor in the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. He is also a nonresident senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution and a research fellow with the Center for Household Financial Stability at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, as well as an elected member of the National Academy of Social Insurance. Hardy’s research interests lie in labor economics, income volatility trends, and racial economic inequality, among other areas. He received an Equitable Growth grant in 2017 to study the long-term effects of racial segregation on human capital and upward mobility in the United States, and co-authored a chapter for Equitable Growth’s Vision 2020 series of essays on race and the lack of U.S. intergenerational mobility. Hardy also recently discussed his work on anti-poverty policy, socioeconomic outcomes, and neighborhood economic development within the United States at an Equitable Growth virtual event on addressing regional inequalities. Learn more about Hardy’s work on race, intergenerational mobility, and the need for structural change in the United States from his panel at Equitable Growth’s 2019 policy conference, split into two parts.

Quote from Bradley Hardy on economic inequality and low mobility

Cecilia Muñoz

New America

Cecilia Muñoz is a senior advisor at New America, an organization dedicated to confronting the challenges caused by rapid technological and social change and seizing the opportunities those changes create. She is also a senior fellow at Results for America, a nonprofit that works to advance the use of data and evidence in policymaking. Previously, she served on President Barack Obama’s senior staff as the first Latinx director of the Domestic Policy Council and director of Intergovernmental Affairs. Prior to her time in the executive branch, Muñoz spent 20 years at the National Council of La Raza (now UNIDOS US), the largest Hispanic policy and advocacy organization in the United States. Muñoz has written about the importance of diversity and the challenges many women and people of color face in fields historically dominated by men and White people, as well as the importance of recognizing the economic contributions of immigrants in the United States. Learn more about Muñoz’s experience working with questions around technology and the future of work, as well as the structural changes necessary to ensure the U.S. economy works for all workers, from her panel at Equitable Growth’s 2019 policy conference, divided into two parts.

Quote from Cecilia Munoz on policymaking with input from target communities

Interested in learning more about our biennial policy conference?

For information about “Equitable Growth 2021: Evidence for a Stronger Economic Future,” click here. To register to attend the event on September 20 and 21, click here.

To watch more sessions and highlights from Equitable Growth’s “Vision 2020: Evidence for a Stronger Economy,” click here.

Equitable Growth is building a network of experts across disciplines and at various stages in their career who can exchange ideas and ensure that research on inequality and broadly shared growth is relevant, accessible, and informative to both the policymaking process and future research agendas. Explore the ways you can connect with our network or take advantage of the support we offer here. 

Expert Focus: From academia to the administration, Equitable Growth scholars transition to executive branch

Posted on by Maria Monroe
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Equitable Growth is committed to building a community of scholars working to understand how inequality affects broadly shared growth and stability. To that end, we have created the monthly series, “Expert Focus.” This series highlights scholars in the Equitable Growth network and beyond who are at the frontier of social science research. We encourage you to learn more about both the researchers featured below, those featured in prior installments, and our broader network of experts.

When President Joe Biden held his first cabinet meeting, he boasted that the diverse group of federal leaders “looks like America.” The president’s cabinet also includes a number of former academics, bringing much-needed rigorous, evidence-backed thinking to government. Indeed, across the newly formed federal administration, academic researchers—many of them previously funded by or collaborators with Equitable Growth—have taken on critical policymaking roles.

In addition to Equitable Growth co-founder Heather Boushey, who is now a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, former Equitable Growth staffers Greg Leiserson and Amanda Fischer have also joined the executive branch, serving at the CEA and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, respectively. But it’s not just former Equitable Growth in-house experts bringing evidence-backed economic research and policy expertise to bear on the policymaking process. This installment of “Expert Focus” highlights scholars who have joined the Biden administration to make informed federal policymaking decisions that will lead to economic growth that is strong, stable, and broadly shared. 

Alex Hertel-Fernandez

U.S. Department of Labor; on leave as associate professor at Columbia University

Alex Hertel-Fernandez serves as the deputy assistant secretary for research and evaluation at the U.S. Department of Labor. In this role, Hertel-Fernandez evaluates the effectiveness of Labor Department programs and estimates the impact of various policies on U.S. workers. Prior to joining the Biden administration, he worked with Equitable Growth to distill his research findings on labor movements, labor law, and the relationship between unions and Unemployment Insurance. He received an Equitable Growth grant in 2017 to study worker preferences for labor organizing and representation across industries and occupations in the U.S. workforce, releasing his findings in a 2019 working paper.

His recent book, State Capture: How Conservative Activists, Big Businesses, and Wealthy Donors Reshaped the American States—and the Nation (Oxford University Press, 2019), outlines how networks of conservative businesses, donors, and activists developed organizations that recreate federal and state public policies and how similar efforts from progressives fell short.

Quote from Alex Hertel-Fernandez on U.S. labor market

Cecilia Rouse

White House Council of Economic Advisers; on leave as professor at Princeton University

Cecilia Rouse was confirmed by the Senate in March as the 30th chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, making her the first Black leader of the CEA in its 75-year history. In this role, she serves as President Biden’s chief economist and a member of the Cabinet.

Rouse was the keynote speaker at the relaunch of our popular Research on Tap event series, where she participated in a one-on-one conversation alongside reporter Tracy Jan of The Washington Post. During the event, Rouse discussed the need for increasing public investments to address the underlying structural inequalities laid bare by the coronavirus recession and advance a sustained economic recovery that puts the United States on a path toward strong, stable, and broadly shared growth.

Immediately prior to joining the Biden administration, Rouse served as the dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, where she is also a professor of economics. From 2009 to 2011, Rouse served as a member of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. She served on the National Economic Council in the Clinton administration as a special assistant to the president from 1998 to 1999.

Her academic research has focused on the economics of education, including the benefits of community colleges and impact of student loan debt, as well as discrimination and the forces that hold some Americans back in the economy.

Quote from Cecilia Rouse on the pandemic being urgent and a time for opportunity

Gbenga Ajilore

U.S. Department of Agriculture; previously senior economist at the Center for American Progress

Olugbenga “Gbenga” Ajilore is a senior advisor in the Office of the Under Secretary for Rural Development at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Prior to his current role, he was a senior economist at the Center for American Progress and former associate professor of economics at the University of Toledo. He is a past president of the National Economic Association and is a frequent media commentator on the labor market.

His research has focused on race and local public finance, peer effects and adolescent behavior, and police militarization. Ajilore’s work has been published in numerous journals, such as The Review of Black Political Economy, Economics and Human Biology, the Review of Economics of the Household, and the Atlantic Economic Journal.

In addition, Ajilore spoke at our recent virtual event, “Beyond place-based: Reducing regional inequality with place-conscious policies,”discussing how national actions have driven regional inequalities in rural regions and what this means for policy solutions.

Quote from Olugbenga Ajilore on rural America being left behind in policy discussions

Kimberly Clausing

U.S. Department of the Treasury;  previously professor at University of California, Los Angeles School of Law

Kimberly Clausing serves in the Treasury Department as the deputy assistant secretary leading the Office of Tax Analysis. Clausing is in charge of examining tax proposals to inform which policies the Biden administration will pursue and how those policies will impact the overall economy. She was involved in Equitable Growth’s early efforts to understand how the tax system could support a more equitable distribution of growth, receiving funding for her research on the corporate tax system. She has also written for Equitable Growth on international trade and the coronavirus pandemic.

Clausing is a U.S. Fulbright Program scholar and received two research awards to the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels, Belgium and to the Eastern Mediterranean University and the University of Cyprus in Cyprus. In addition to being an Equitable Growth grantee, her research has also been supported by external grants from the National Science Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the International Centre for Tax and Development, and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Clausing previously researched economic policy with the International Monetary Fund, The Brookings Institution, and the Tax Policy Center, and she has testified before both the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Committee on Finance. In addition, she previously worked as a staff economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Prior to becoming a professor at UCLA School of Law, she taught economics at Reed College and Wellesley College.

Her research focuses on the taxation of multinational firms, analyzing how government decisions and corporate behavior intersect within a global economy. She has been published in numerous articles and is the author of Open: The Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital (Harvard University Press, 2019).

Quote from Kimberly Clausing on how the tax code reflects our values

Neil Mehrotra

U.S. Department of the Treasury; previously economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Neil Mehrotra serves in the Treasury Department as the deputy assistant secretary of macroeconomic analysis. Mehrotra has been funded by and written for Equitable Growth on topics from secular stagnation and inequality to fiscal policy stabilization. His background in macroeconomics and previous position as an economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York further highlight his preparedness to analyze macroeconomic policy for the administration and guide decision-making to reduce overall inequality and bolster economic growth for all Americans. Prior to working at the New York Fed, Mehrotra was an assistant professor of economics at Brown University.

His research has been published in the American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, and has been cited in various news outlets, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Business Insider.

Mehrotra was an Equitable Growth seminar speaker, discussing his paper on the consequences of increased public debt. This event was an installment of our monthly academic seminar series, which aims to elevate important new research on issues related to whether and how economic inequality impacts economic growth. If you would like to read the paper, you can find it here and watch the seminar here.

Quote from Neil Mehrotra on the COVID-19 vaccine and the labor market

Tim Wu

White House National Economic Council; previously professor at Columbia University

Tim Wu serves as the special assistant to the president for technology and competition policy on the National Economic Council. His portfolio is similar to the one he and other scholars called for in the November 2020 antitrust transition report from Equitable Growth, in which they described the need for a White House Office of Competition Policy to keep tabs on all the different cross-cutting ways the federal government shapes markets. That report also covered many additional ways Congress and the Biden administration could revitalize antitrust enforcement and restore competition.

Earlier this month, President Biden signed a new executive order, which Wu took the lead in authoring. Many of the 72 initiatives in the federal directive to promote healthy competition in the U.S. economy were inspired by principles put forth in Equitable Growth’s antitrust transition report.

Wu was most recently a professor at Columbia University law school. Prior to being a professor, Wu was enforcement counsel in the New York Attorney General’s Office, worked on competition policy for the National Economic Council for the Obama White House, and in antitrust enforcement at the Federal Trade Commission.

Wu was a guest speaker during a virtual conference in November 2020 to discuss the release of Equitable Growth’s antitrust transition report. You can watch the event here.

Quote from Tim Wu on American antitrust

Expert Focus: Intersections between racial equity and disaggregation of data

Posted on by Maria Monroe
""

Equitable Growth is committed to building a community of scholars working to understand how inequality affects broadly shared growth and stability. To that end, we have created the monthly series, “Expert Focus.” This series highlights scholars in the Equitable Growth network and beyond who are at the frontier of social science research. We encourage you to learn more about both the researchers featured below, those featured in prior installments, and our broader network of experts.

The Washington Center for Equitable Growth and Groundwork Collaborative will co-host an event titled “Data Infrastructure for the 21st Century: A Focus on Racial Equity” (register here) on June 15. This latest installment of “Expert Focus” highlights the scholars who are participating in this virtual event and who are interested in racial equity and data disaggregation. Data are ever more urgent to address both scientific research and policy needs, exemplified by the establishment of the Equitable Data Working Group in the Biden administration.

Scholars and organizations are also calling for a focus on racial and gender equity and the use of categories such as race, gender, and ethnicity, along with other social and demographic factors, to be central goals in disaggregating data and giving us a better picture of how our economy is doing. To learn more about the opportunities to better reflect diversity in the data, join us for the event (register here). Among the panelists at tomorrow’s event are Rhonda Sharpe and Marie Mora, both of whom were featured in past installments of Expert Focus. Read on to see who else will be speaking at our event.

Randall Akee

University of California, Los Angeles

Randall Akee is an associate professor in the Department of Public Policy and American Indian Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He serves on the National Advisory Council on Race, Ethnic, and Other Populations at the U.S. Census Bureau. In 2019, Akee and colleagues launched the Association for Economic Research of Indigenous Peoples, and he was recently profiled by the American Economic Association Committee on the Status of Minority Groups in the Economics Profession, which speaks to his longstanding commitment to support and advance underrepresented groups in economics. For the past decade, Akee has argued for the disaggregation of data. In 2021, Akee, along with Marcus Casey, another Equitable Growth grantee, highlighted the inadequate sample sizes in some federal surveys. Also, Akee and K.J. Ward of The Brookings Institution commented on how inadequate these surveys are at capturing hidden activities that are a result of systemic racism. Much of Akee’s own academic research uses administrative data or linked administrative or survey data to disaggregate economic outcomes and examine the current and historic examples of discrimination.

Quote from Randy Akee on the American Indian population and disaggregated data

Corey D. Fields

Georgetown University

Corey Fields is an associate professor and the Idol Family Chair of the Sociology Department at Georgetown University. Fields’ research centers on the role of identity at individual and collective levels and how these structure social life. By drawing on a cultural perspective, his work emphasizes the role of meaning and how identities are enacted in specific social contexts. In particular, Fields brings expertise about how methods and theories in sociology and in less structured or differently structured data collection can help to better capture the lived experiences of residents and families in the United States. Often, this information goes unnoticed in data research. For instance, Fields is part of a joint initiative of Stanford University and Princeton University called the American Voices Project, a national survey in the United States. He is currently using these data to examine racial differences in individuals’ experiences of the coronavirus pandemic and protests against police injustice. In a 2015 Social Currents article, Fields and other scholars explore how variation within ethnoracial “groups” presents a challenge to researchers who must adapt ethnographic and survey research practices to better understand the landscape for individuals and their families in the United States and the implications for issues relative to a person’s identity.

Quote from Corey Fields and co-authors on intra-group diversity and group identity

Rakeen Mabud

Groundwork Collaborative

Rakeen Mabud is the managing director of policy and research and chief economist at the Groundwork Collaborative. Mabud is an expert on economic inequality and the 21st century workplace, with a particular focus on how structural factors such as racism and sexism perpetuate inequities. She has written extensively about the need to use disaggregated data to guide policy decisions. Most recently, Mabud was the senior director of research and strategy at TIME’S UP Foundation, where she spearheaded the organization’s signature Time’s Up, Measure Up initiative, a 5-year initiative to study and report on the impact of gender and racial inequities. The initiative seeks to fill critical knowledge gaps, drawing on quantitative data, qualitative research, and personal stories to develop a fuller picture of the myriad experiences of women in the U.S. economy. Mabud’s recent research prioritizes the disaggregation of data by race and gender. In 2020, a national survey she fielded, along with partners at the National Employment Law Project, Cornell University’s ILR School, and Color of Change, examined worker experiences with the coronavirus pandemic around the country, with a particular focus on underpaid and front-line workers, Black and Latino workers, and women workers. This survey oversampled Black and Latinx respondents to disaggregate data and capture demographic variation (for details, see the report’s findings).

Quote from Rakeen Mabud on disaggregating data

Tracey Ross

PolicyLink

Tracey Ross is the director for federal policy and narrative change at PolicyLink. With a focus on racial equity and placed-based strategies for economic inclusion, Ross led the organization’s All-in Cities initiative, working with cities across the country to adopt policies and practices to ensure one’s ZIP code does not determine their life outcomes. Recently, PolicyLink released a report detailing 10 priorities for advancing racial equity through the recently enacted American Rescue Plan. Two priorities in this report are to explicitly name racial equity as a goal, with specific targets to produce results at scale, and to track the disaggregation of data to ensure accountability to equity goals. In 2017, PolicyLink organized a series of convenings with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which informed the report “Counting a Diverse Nation: Disaggregating Data on Race and Ethnicity to Advance a Culture of Health.” Prior to joining PolicyLink, Ross worked at the Center for American Progress and focused on urban poverty and environmental justice, and at Living Cities, where she focused on building a green economy. Ross began her career in the offices of former U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and former U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar (D-CO).

Quote from Tracey Ross on undercounting minority groups in the U.S. census

Danny Yagan

Chief Economist, Office of Management and Budget

Danny Yagan is the chief economist at the Office of Management and Budget and a participant in the Biden administration’s Equitable Data Working Group. Yagan is currently on leave from the University of California, Berkeley, where he is an associate professor in the Department of Economics. Yagan’s research has focused on a variety of topics, including U.S. tax policy, business investment, recession recovery, income inequality, and upward mobility. In 2017, a research project looked at persistent lags in the workforce after the Great Recession of 2007­–2009. Over the years, Yagan has been awarded multiple grants from Equitable Growth related to wealth inequality and intergenerational mobility, including work done with former Equitable Growth Steering Committee members Raj Chetty and Emmanuel Saez.

Quote from Danny Yagan and co-authors on incomes in American communities

Equitable Growth is building a network of experts across disciplines and at various stages in their career who can exchange ideas and ensure that research on inequality and broadly shared growth is relevant, accessible, and informative to both the policymaking process and future research agendas. Explore the ways you can connect with our network or take advantage of the support we offer here.

Expert Focus: Examining and elevating the economic experiences of AANHPI populations

Posted on by Maria Monroe
""

Equitable Growth is committed to building a community of scholars working to understand how inequality affects broadly shared growth and stability. To that end, we have created the monthly series, “Expert Focus.” This series highlights scholars in the Equitable Growth network and beyond who are at the frontier of social science research. We encourage you to learn more about the researchers featured below, those featured in prior installments, and our broader network of experts.

May is AANHPI Heritage Month in the United States, a period of time to commemorate the achievements and contributions of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders.1 This large and diverse demographic group—the fastest-growing racial or ethnic group in the United States—faces distinct challenges, and has been uniquely impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, the ensuing recession, and a troubling wave of anti-Asian violence and discrimination across the country since last March. The Asian American community traces its origins to more than 20 countries in East and Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent, and there are more than 21 distinct Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander ethnic groups on which the U.S. Census Bureau collects data. These groups are not a monolith—each subpopulation has vastly different cultures, histories, languages, economic characteristics, and more—and the diversity of experience among AANHPI populations is often misrepresented when data for these populations are aggregated.

This month’s Expert Focus looks at scholars across disciplines doing economic research on AANHPI populations and their experiences in the United States. This includes work on intergenerational mobility, wage equality and access to the U.S. labor market along race and gender lines, health outcomes, and recently, the disparate impacts of the coronavirus pandemic and recession on AANHPI communities. These researchers also have worked to improve research and data collection methods—from oversampling to data disaggregation, and other initiatives to ensure the data more accurately capture the diversity of Asian American subgroups in the United States.

Raj Chetty

Harvard University

Raj Chetty is the William A. Ackman professor of public economics at Harvard University and the director of Opportunity Insights, which uses data to examine how to give children from disadvantaged backgrounds a better chance at success. The resulting—and widely cited—Opportunity Atlas project presents various data on children’s outcomes in adulthood based on the neighborhood in which they grew up, and allows users to filter the data based on income level, gender, and race, including for Asian American children. This important database provides a unique and disaggregated look at intergenerational mobility in the United States, and how socioeconomic and demographic differences impact outcomes in adulthood. Chetty’s research combines empirical evidence and economic theory to design more effective public policy, from tax policy and Unemployment Insurance to education and housing access. He also is a former member of Equitable Growth’s Steering Committee and in 2018, Equitable Growth featured a working paper by Chetty and co-authors on the innovation and invention gap among women and people of color, including Asian Americans, in the United States.

Quote from Raj Chetty and co-authors on disparities in who becomes an inventor in America

ChangHwan Kim 

University of Kansas

ChangHwan Kim is a professor of sociology and the director of Graduate Studies in the Sociology Department at the University of Kansas. He specializes in the areas of stratification, work and organizations, race and ethnicity, and Asian American and Korea studies, using quantitative methods, panel models, and diverse statistical decompositions. A common thread of his work is to generate knowledge and findings that guide policymakers who are looking to address socioeconomic polarization in U.S. society and the economy. A 2014 study with co-author Yang Zhao, also of the University of Kansas, finds that even when accounting for demographic and other factors, such as years of work, industry, and geographic region, Asian American women who have graduated from college supervise fewer workers than their White counterparts. This finding highlights that variables in human capital alone cannot fully account for the underrepresentation of Asian Americans in high-level positions, which suggests that discrimination and stereotypes likely play a role in preventing access to these roles.

Quote from ChangHwan Kim and co-authors on Asian American job losses during COVID-19

Paul Ong

University of California, Los Angeles

Paul Ong is an economist, research professor, and the director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at the University of California, Los Angeles Luskin School of Public Affairs. He is also the founder and former editor of AAPI Nexus, one of the few national journals focusing on policies, practices, and community research to benefit the nation’s burgeoning Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. Ong’s research centers on the U.S. labor market status of people of color and immigrants, sustainability and equity, the racial wealth gap, and the role of urban structures in the reproduction of inequality. He has served as an advisor to the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. Department of Justice, the California Department of Social Services, and the Employment Development Department, among others. Ong has published several books, including on Asian immigration and Asian American race relations in the United States, and has written extensively over the past year on the disparate impacts of the coronavirus on Asian Americans, including the surge in anti-Asian sentiment that has led to increased violence and discrimination against these communities.

Quote from Paul Ong and co-author on Asian American discrimination during coronavirus

Sela Panapasa

University of Michigan

Sela Panapasa is an associate research scientist in the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. Her research interests lie in family demography, race and ethnicity, health disparities, and comparative studies. She is currently studying the impacts of socio-demographic change on the health and well-being of Pacific Islanders living in the United States across their life course, with the goal of providing baseline data needed to address and eliminate health disparities among Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islanders. Panapasa also has chaired the U.S. Census Bureau’s Advisory Committee on Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders, advising the agency on best practices for reaching these communities in the decennial census count. She also served on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health Advisory Committee on Minority Health, advising the office on improving data on the health of hard-to-survey populations. This work led to the 2014 Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander National Health Interview Survey. Her focus on collecting and assessing socioeconomic and health data for Pacific Islanders is an important contribution to the existing literature, and she is a proponent of the push to disaggregate data on subgroups and difficult-to-reach groups within the AANHPI populations.

Quote from Sela Panapasa and co-authors on the lack of NHPI health data

Janelle Wong

University of Maryland

Janelle Wong is a professor of American Studies and a faculty member in the Asian American Studies program at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research interests include Asian American studies, race, religion and politics, political participation, immigration, and political attitudes and behaviors. She is a senior researcher at AAPIData.com, which publishes demographic data and policy research on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders—an issue she co-authored a research article on in 2018, arguing that accurately collecting these data is a civil rights issue. Wong also recently published, with co-author Sono Shah at the Pew Research Center, an analysis of the 2016 National Asian American Survey that finds overarching political consensus within the Asian American population across policy and issue areas. She has also written on best practices for collecting data online among communities of color, and has advocated for affirmative action policies and other Asian American issues. Her 2011 book, Asian American Political Participation: Emerging Constituents and their Political Identities, was based on the first nationally representative survey of Asian Americans’ political attitudes and behavior, which was conducted in eight different languages with six different Asian American subgroups.

Quote from Janelle Wong on disaggregated data for Asian Americans

Equitable Growth is building a network of experts across disciplines and at various stages in their career who can exchange ideas and ensure that research on inequality and broadly shared growth is relevant, accessible, and informative to both the policymaking process and future research agendas. Explore the ways you can connect with our network or take advantage of the support we offer here.

Expert Focus: Examining and strengthening U.S. care infrastructure

Posted on by Maria Monroe
""

Equitable Growth is committed to building a community of scholars working to understand how inequality affects broadly shared growth and stability. To that end, we have created the monthly series, “Expert Focus.” This series highlights scholars in the Equitable Growth network and beyond who are at the frontier of social science research. We encourage you to learn more about both the researchers featured below and our broader network of experts.

The care economy in the United States provides support to many workers across the economy, be it in the form of child care and early childhood programs, paid family and medical leave, or long-term and elder care. At the same time, the lack of federally mandated access to these programs in the United States leaves millions more workers struggling to manage their care needs and responsibilities, leading to lower productivity, wage penalties, and work-life conflicts that are incredibly difficult to navigate.

The care industry is rife with longstanding challenges and deficiencies that existed long before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, which has only served to deepen these cracks in care infrastructure, particularly along gender and racial lines. As President Joe Biden pushes for Congress to pass his infrastructure and jobs plan to boost the economy and jumpstart the recovery from the coronavirus recession, it is vital that policymakers address not only physical infrastructure but also care infrastructure needs.

In this installment of Expert Focus, we highlight scholars investigating the U.S. care economy. These researchers are examining care infrastructure and policies, and looking at the economic, social, and health impacts of these programs on workers, their families, and their communities. Their findings can guide policymakers who are keen to make much-needed public investments that support workers and the overall economy alike at this pivotal moment for our economic recovery.

Eric Chyn

Dartmouth College

Eric Chyn is an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at Dartmouth College and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is a labor and public economist, and his recent research looks at the effects of government programs and policies on children and child well-being, and the importance of a child’s environment. He also studies the short- and long-run impacts of additional medical care for children with low birth weights, looking at their health and educational outcomes as well as their future use of income-support and safety net programs. His findings have been covered in outlets such as The Atlantic, Harvard Business Review, and The New York Times. In 2017, Chyn and Justine Hastings, a professor of economics and international and public affairs at Brown University, received an Equitable Growth grant to study the impact of paid maternity leave on mothers and their children in Rhode Island.

Quote from Eric Chin and co-authors on medical care for children

Maya Rossin-Slater

Stanford University

Maya Rossin-Slater is an economist and an associate professor of medicine at Stanford University’s School of Medicine. Her research focuses on health, public, and labor economics, and specifically on maternal and child well-being, family structure and behavior, and policies targeting disadvantaged populations. Rossin-Slater is well known for her contributions to the literature on paid family and medical leave in the United States, including from research funded by two Equitable Growth grants (in 2016 and in 2019). She also co-authored a chapter of Equitable Growth’s Vision 2020: Evidence for a stronger economy project, urging policymakers to enact paid leave programs across the United States and providing evidence of the economic benefits such a guarantee would bring. Rossin-Slater has written on a number of other issues related to care infrastructure, including the impact of fathers’ leave-taking in the months following childbirth on mothers’ physical and mental health, as well as other topics, such as the effects of school shootings on adolescents’ mental health and future economic outcomes.

Quote from Maya Rossin-Slater and co-author on paid family leave

Bweikia Steen

George Mason University

Bweikia Steen is an associate professor of education in the Early Childhood Education Program at George Mason University. Her research interests include promoting social-emotional and academic excellence among children of color and children who have experienced poverty during the early years of their education, and she is a researcher and advocate of effective strategies for best meeting the needs of families of color. She also focuses on promoting healthy transitions for children entering Kindergarten, addressing the literacy achievement gap starting in preschool, and adapting early childhood education classrooms to be more inclusive for transgender youth. During the coronavirus pandemic, she has written about navigating virtual schooling for young children and creating an inclusive and equitable climate in early childhood and elementary school settings.

Quote from Bweikia Steen and co-author on inclusive and equitable early childhood schools

Jane Waldfogel

Columbia University

Jane Waldfogel is a professor of social work and public affairs at Columbia University, co-director of the Columbia Population Research Center, and a visiting professor at the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics. She is a leading authority on the impact of public policies, including paid family and medical leave, universal preschool, and child allowances, on child and family well-being. Waldfogel—who has received three Equitable Growth grants, including one in 2020 to study access to and use of paid leave during the coronavirus pandemic in New York City—is the author of six books on a range of social mobility topics, from child poverty to inequality’s impact on test scores and the achievement gap. She has spoken and been cited extensively since President Biden’s American Rescue Plan passed earlier this year with an extension of the Child Tax Credit, which is expected to cut U.S. child poverty in half. Recently, she released an NBER working paper with findings from a 2016 Equitable Growth grant on the impact of paid family leave on employers in New York state.

Quote from Jane Waldfogel and co-author on paid family care leave

Nicolas R. Ziebarth

Cornell University

Nicolas Ziebarth is a tenured associate professor in the Department for Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University and the associate director of the Cornell Institute for Healthy Futures. He studies the interaction of social insurance systems with labor markets and population health, covering such topics as health insurance, the interaction between the environment and health, health inequality and measurement, and spending on health care. He is an international expert on the economics of sick leave, and his research in this area is cited as a reason that the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, passed by Congress in early 2020 in response to the pandemic, included emergency sick leave. A study he co-authored in October 2020 shows that these sick leave provisions successfully flattened the curve of coronavirus infections in the United States. Ziebarth received funding last year from Equitable Growth to study the impact of state- and city-level paid leave mandates on employer-provided leave.

Quote from Nicolas Ziebarth and co-authors on paid sick leave

Equitable Growth is building a network of experts across disciplines and at various stages in their career who can exchange ideas and ensure that research on inequality and broadly shared growth is relevant, accessible, and informative to both the policymaking process and future research agendas. Explore the ways you can connect with our network or take advantage of the support we offer here. 

Expert Focus: Supporting women’s labor force participation to boost U.S. economic growth and recovery

Posted on by Maria Monroe
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Equitable Growth is committed to building a community of scholars working to understand how inequality affects broadly shared growth and stability. To that end, we have created the monthly series, “Expert Focus.” This series highlights scholars in the Equitable Growth network and beyond who are at the frontier of social science research. We encourage you to learn more about both the researchers featured below and our broader network of experts.

This year’s Women’s History Month marks 1 year since many coronavirus lockdowns and stay-at-home policies were put in place across the United States. Amid the pandemic, women are experiencing higher rates of unemployment and are taking on more home responsibilities and heavier child care burdens than men. Working mothers also suffer from higher levels of stress and depressive symptoms as a result of the pandemic, particularly those facing income losses due to involuntary unemployment. The reality of the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on women workers, and especially women workers of color, makes more glaring the gender disparities that were already rampant across the U.S. labor force prior to the coronavirus recession. Even though women are a critical driver of economic growth, U.S. women workers are paid less than their male counterparts, face motherhood penalties, are often pushed into low-wage jobs and industries, and bear the brunt of unpaid household labor.

This installment of Expert Focus highlights research and scholars examining women in the U.S. labor force and issues that inhibit their labor force participation, as well as those performing intersectional analyses and promoting ideas that target women in order to boost economic growth for all U.S. workers and their families. This research will be all the more important in the months and years to come, as policymakers navigate the recovery from the coronavirus recession—also known as the “shecession”—and women work to get back some of the hard-fought labor market gains that were lost over the past year.

Janet Currie

Princeton University

Janet Currie is the Henry Putnam professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University, the co-director of Princeton’s Center for Health and Well-Being, and a former member of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth’s Steering Committee. Currie also co-directs the Program on Families and Children at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She is well-known for her work on child health and well-being, including research on the long-term positive effects of high-quality child care and early education and on the impact of prenatal healthcare on human capital development. She was an author of the National Academy of Science’s “A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty,” which shaped the design of the new child allowance included in the American Rescue Plan. Currie’s research on early childhood programs, and particularly their impact on children from disadvantaged households, continues to improve economists’ understanding of early childhood’s impact on the broader economy and on health and economic outcomes in adulthood. These programs also often increase women’s labor force participation, easing new parents’ return to work after the birth or adoption of a child.

Quote from Janet Currie on early childhood education

Claudia Goldin

Harvard University

Claudia Goldin is the Henry Lee professor of economics at Harvard University and the co-director of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Gender in the Economy Study Group. She is best known for her work on women’s roles in the U.S. economy and their labor force participation, income inequality, and the gender pay gap. Goldin’s research covering more than 100 years of economic history highlights how women have been major players in the U.S. economy since the late 1800s and how their participation in the labor force changed over the years in response to various societal trends and influences. Through her historical studies tracking women’s evolving economic roles, she has shown how earnings differences by gender are not largely due to productivity or educational differences between men and women, but rather are a reflection of the high costs of workplace flexibility and work-family balance for working parents, particularly mothers. Her recently completed book, Career & Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey toward Equity, will be published by Princeton University Press in fall 2021.

Quote from Claudia Goldin on women in the economy

Janelle Jones

U.S. Department of Labor

Janelle Jones is the chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, the first Black woman to hold that position. She is a labor economist and well-known for her work on racial inequality, unemployment, unions, and intersectional structural barriers to economic and labor force participation. In 2020, along with Grace Western and Kendra Bozarth, Jones authored an issue brief advocating for policies that center Black women in U.S. policymaking and politics. This “Black Women Best” approach not only works to dismantle systematic racism and sexism that is built into U.S. institutions, but also boosts the economy more broadly and ensures widespread prosperity and growth. Prior to joining the Biden administration, she spent more than a decade researching racial disparities in the labor market. In 2015, Jones was awarded an Equitable Growth doctoral grant for her research into intergenerational wealth transfers and racial wealth divides.

Quote from Janelle Jones and co-authors on systemic exclusions and building back better

Kristen Harknett

University of California, San Francisco

Kristen Harknett is an associate professor of sociology at the University of California, San Francisco. Her research interests lie in schedule stability, worker health and well-being, and job quality. Together with sociologist Daniel Schneider, Harknett built what is now one of the largest sources of data on work scheduling, household economic security, and the health and well-being of hourly workers and their families, with reports from more than 84,000 workers around the country. This work reveals the health and well-being consequences of so-called precarious work—which typically includes jobs with low and/or stagnant wages and schedule instability and uncertainty—for workers and their families, from psychological distress to poor sleep quality and unhappiness. In 2015, Harknett and Schneider received an Equitable Growth grant to study the relationship between rising economic inequality and family insecurity.

Daniel Schneider

Harvard University

Daniel Schneider is a professor of public policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and co-director, with Kristen Harknett, of The Shift Project at Harvard, studying scheduling practices and worker well-being in the retail and service industry. Though his work with Harknett does not focus exclusively on women, these low-wage, highly unstable jobs tend to be filled by women and workers of color thanks, in part, to occupational segregation. Schneider and Harknett’s work is particularly important today amid the coronavirus recession, when many low-wage occupations face increased health risks due to the pandemic. Schneider and Harknett—both vocal advocates for these workers during the coronavirus outbreak—are urging policymakers and employers to address various aspects of precarious work—from access to and awareness of  paid family and medical leave and personal protective equipment to more predictable scheduling—in order to provide better conditions and protections for these front-line workers.

Quote from Daniel Schneider and Kristen Harknett on shift workers and racial disparities

Linh Tô

Boston University

Linh Tô is an assistant professor of economics at Boston University. Her research focus is on labor, public, and behavioral economics, often using quasi-experimental methods and administrative datasets, as well as experimental methods, to understand labor market outcomes and decisions, with a focus on the economics of gender. In 2017, she was awarded an Equitable Growth doctoral grant for her research on the impact of childbirth and parental leave policies on job match quality and the gender wage gap. Tô’s research on paid parental leave highlights the importance of paid leave for working mothers’ labor force participation, leave-taking, and earnings differentials upon their return to work, as well as the design of paid leave programs, particularly considering the growing gender disparities in the workforce and in labor force participation amid the coronavirus recession.

Quote from Linh To on paid leave benefits

Equitable Growth is building a network of experts across disciplines and at various stages in their career who can exchange ideas and ensure that research on inequality and broadly shared growth is relevant, accessible, and informative to both the policymaking process and future research agendas. Explore the ways you can connect with our network or take advantage of the support we offer here.

Expert Focus: Diversifying the economics profession

Posted on by Maria Monroe
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Equitable Growth is committed to building a community of scholars working to understand how inequality affects broadly shared growth and stability. To that end, we have created the monthly series, “Expert Focus.” This series highlights scholars in the Equitable Growth network and beyond who are at the frontier of social science research. We encourage you to learn more about both the researchers featured below and our broader network of experts.

This Black History Month, we are highlighting Black scholars who are leading critical work to cultivate more inclusive pathways in economics and diversifying the economics profession. The underrepresentation of Black students among economics Ph.D. recipients and Black economists in both faculty and federal policymaking are longstanding issues for the economics discipline and profession. Organizations that steadfastly work to cultivate racial and ethnic diversity in the economics profession include the National Economics Association, founded in 1969 as the Caucus of Black Economists and of which several of the scholars highlighted in this issue are former presidents, and the Sadie Collective, founded in 2018 as the first and only organization that uniquely addresses the pathway and pipeline problems for Black women in economics and public policy.

Other programs that are indispensable to increasing and sustaining diversity in academia include the Diversity Initiative for Tenure in Economics, founded in 2008, which provides research and professional development mentorship for early career faculty, and the American Economic Association Summer Training and Scholarship Program, which has accounted for nearly 20 percent of all economics Ph.D. degrees awarded to people from historically underrepresented and disadvantaged groups. Equitable Growth is committed to supporting these ongoing efforts and recognizes the critical importance of the perspectives of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color in understanding how inequality, in all its forms, affects economic growth and stability.

Lisa Cook

Michigan State University

Lisa Cook is a professor of economics and international relations at Michigan State University and former senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisers. Her research interests include economic growth and development, financial institutions and markets, innovation, and economic history. Cook is on the executive committee of the American Economic Association, as well as part of the new equity, diversity, and professional conduct committee for the AEA, which recently conducted a climate survey of the economics profession that reported dismal findings but also provided a baseline point for improvement. Cook is a member of Equitable Growth’s Steering Committee and received an Equitable Growth grant in 2018 to examine the role of gender and racial disparities on U.S. innovation, which links discrimination and systemic racism to creative losses and lower economic returns in the U.S. economy.

Quote from Lisa Cook on gender and racial disparities in STEM

Rhonda Vonshay Sharpe

Women’s Institute for Science, Equity, and Race

Rhonda Vonshay Sharpe is an economist and the founder and president of the Women’s Institute for Science, Equity, and Race. She is a leading advocate for the disaggregation of data by race, ethnicity, and gender, and the characteristics that influence outcomes to be the standard for all research. She has written extensively on the professional experiences of Black scholars, including on continued challenges of academic diversity efforts and their long-term consequences for the production of economics knowledge to inform public policies to address racial inequality. With William A. Darity, Jr. at Duke University, she co-founded the Diversity Initiative for Tenure in Economics in 2008, and is currently the associate director of the American Economic Association Summer Training and Scholarship Program. She is also the co-editor of the Review of Black Political Economy, a journal on policy prescriptions to address racial, ethnic, and gender economic inequality. Through a partnership between AEASP and WISER, Sharpe is launching the Inclusive Peer Onsite Distance , or IPOD, mentoring program in support of undergraduate, post-baccalaureate, and master’s-level students.

Quote from Rhonda V. Sharpe on seeing Black women disaggregated in data

Gary A. Hoover

Tulane University

Gary A. Hoover is professor of economics and the executive director of the Murphy Institute, a political economy research center at Tulane University. His research specialties are in policy analysis of income distribution and poverty, public finance, and the ethics of economics. Hoover is the founder and editor in chief of the Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy, launched in 2017 to address how local and global issues around race, ethnicity, and gender overlap and possible policy solutions to address economic disparities. Additionally, he is a co-chair of the American Economic Association Committee on the Status of Minority Groups in the Economics Profession, which monitors the racial and ethnic diversity of the economics profession.

Quote from Amanda Bayer, Gary Hoover, and Ebonya Washington on diversifying the economics profession

Omari Holmes Swinton

Howard University

Omari Swinton is associate professor of economics and chair of the Economics Department at Howard University. His research interests include labor economics, the economics of education, and industrial organization, with an extensive focus on the academic labor market for Black scholars. In a paper with Equitable Growth grantee Rodney Andrews, Swinton examines harmful misinformation and cultural myths concerning the academic performance of Black students and access to higher education, finding a lack of empirical evidence that Black students’ attitudes toward education are a major contributor to racial divides in educational performance, and provides evidence that race-neutral alternatives to affirmative action policies are both less effective and less efficient in producing racially diverse cohorts. He is both an alumnus and the current director of the American Economic Association Summer Training and Scholarship Program, which will be hosted, for the first time at a historically Black college and university, at Howard University in summer 2021.

Quote from Omari Swinton and co-authors on the nurturing effects of HBCUs

Ebonya L. Washington

Yale University

Ebonya L. Washington is Samuel C. Park Jr. professor of economics at Yale University. Her research focuses on public finance and political economy, including the interplay of race, gender and political representation, the consequences of political participation, and the processes through which low-income Americans meet their financial needs. She is also a co-chair on the Committee on the Status of Minority Groups in the Economics Profession, which recently launched an annual program to award seed grants for economics departments to start programs aimed at diversity and inclusion.

Quote from Amanda Bayer, Gary Hoover, and Ebonya Washington on incentives for increasing diversity

Equitable Growth is building a network of experts across disciplines and at various stages in their career who can exchange ideas and ensure that research on inequality and broadly shared growth is relevant, accessible, and informative to both the policymaking process and future research agendas. Explore the ways you can connect with our network or take advantage of the support we offer here. 

Expert Focus: Understanding the economic impacts of climate change

Posted on by Maria Monroe
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Equitable Growth is committed to building a community of scholars working to understand how inequality affects broadly shared growth and stability. To that end, we have created the monthly series, “Expert Focus.” This series highlights scholars in the Equitable Growth network and beyond who are at the frontier of social science research. We encourage you to learn more about both the researchers featured below and our broader network of experts. If you are looking for support to investigate the intersection of climate change and economic inequality and growth, please see our current Request for Proposals.

Climate change is a crisis that reinforces and exacerbates existing U.S. economic inequalities, placing a disproportionate burden on those people who have minimal safety net protections and are already more vulnerable to health-related risks, financial shocks, and climate-related hazards. Understanding the full economic, social, and environmental benefits and costs of addressing the consequences and risks of climate change is critical to understanding what makes the economy grow sustainably and equitably. This installment of “Expert Focus” highlights the research of scholars who are taking into full account the effects of climate change and related policies across communities, income and wealth distributions, firms and workers, and the macroeconomy.

Stephie Fried 

Arizona State University 

Stephie Fried is an assistant professor at Arizona State University’s W.P. Casey School of Business and a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Her research focuses on the macroeconomic implications of environmental economics. Recent work, including this working paper published in the American Economic Journal, studies the effect of a carbon tax on the macroeconomy, its relationship to innovation, and its impact on current and future generations. Her forthcoming research, with Gregory Casey and Matthew Gibson of Williams College, will examine the effects of climate change on different sectors of the economy and the consequences for economic growth.

Quote from Stephie Fried and co-authors on carbon tax policies

Solomon Hsiang 

University of California, Berkeley

Solomon Hsiang is the Chancellor’s professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, where he directs the Climate Impact Lab, which analyzes historical socioeconomic and climate data to estimate the relationship between a changing climate and human well-being. Hsiang’s recent research includes understanding the distributional effects of environmental damages for welfare analysis and policy design, published in the Review of Environmental Economics and Policy with Paulina Oliva at the University of Southern California and Reed Walker at UC Berkeley. He has testified before the U.S. Congress on the economic costs of climate change and has written about the importance of economics to climate change science.

Quote from Solomon Hsiang on climate as a national asset

Leah Stokes 

University of California, Santa Barbara

Leah Stokes is an assistant professor of political science and affiliated with the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management and the Environmental Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research interests include both energy and environmental politics, with particular focus on climate change, renewable energy, water, and chemicals policy. Stokes co-authored “A plan for equitable climate policy in the United States,” with Matto Mildenberger, assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, as part of Equitable Growth’s Vision 2020 policy essay series. Her recent book, Short Circuiting Policy, examines the role that utilities have played in promoting climate denial and rolling back clean energy laws.

Quote from Leah Stokes and Matto Mildenberger on climate change and vulnerable communities

R. Jisung Park

University of California, Los Angeles

R. Jisung Park is an assistant professor in the Department of Public Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles Luskin School of Public Affairs. An environmental and labor economist, Park’s research interests include the consequences of climate change for economic inequality and mobility for vulnerable populations. He was recently awarded an Equitable Growth grant to explore the disparate impacts of extreme temperatures due to climate change on workers, and the implications for workplace safety and labor policy.

Quote from R. Jisung Park and co-authors on heat and learning

Randall Walsh

University of Pittsburgh

Randall Walsh is a professor and director of the Master of Science in quantitative economics program at the University of Pittsburgh. Walsh is also a research associate affiliated with the Environment and Energy Economics program and the Determinants of the American Economy group within the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research focuses on economic history and urban and environmental economics. Along with Spencer Banzhaf of Georgia State University, Walsh was recently awarded an Equitable Growth grant to utilize never-before-used historical data to investigate the relationships among race/ethnicity, income, pollution, and human capital in Pittsburgh from 1910 to 2010.

Quote from Randall Walsh and co-authors on zoning and pollution

Equitable Growth is building a network of experts across disciplines and at various stages in their career who can exchange ideas and ensure that research on inequality and broadly shared growth is relevant, accessible, and informative to both the policymaking process and future research agendas. Explore the ways you can connect with our network or take advantage of the support we offer here.