Melissa S. Kearney
Director, Aspen Economic Strategy Group
Neil Moskowitz Professor of Economics, University of Maryland
MELISSA S. KEARNEY is the Neil Moskowitz Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland. She is also director of the Aspen Economic Strategy Group; a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research; and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of MDRC and on the Board of the Notre Dame Wilson-Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities. Kearney previously served as Director of the Hamilton Project at Brookings and as co-chair of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology J-PAL State and Local Innovation Initiative. Kearney’s research focuses on poverty, inequality, and social policy in the United States. Her work is published in leading academic journals and is frequently cited in the press. She is an editorial board member of the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy and the Journal of Economic Literature; she was previously co-editor of the Journal of Human Resources and a Senior Editor of the Future of Children. She is the author of The Two-Parent Privilege (University of Chicago Press, 2023.) Kearney teaches Public Economics at both the undergraduate and Ph.D. level at the University of Maryland. She holds a B.A. in Economics from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT.
Publications
Introduction: Strengthening America’s Economic Dynamism
Global tensions and domestic discontent are driving a new era of economic policymaking. Leaders in both parties are turning away from free-market principles and endorsing an increase in protectionist trade policies and more active government-directed industrial policy. Further, these disruptions come when the country’s economic and political landscapes face systemic difficulties including limited state capacity ...
Rising Childlessness is Driving the Decline in Birth Rates in the United States
The United States has experienced a dramatic decline in birth rates, starting in 2007 and continuing through recent years. This post updates and expands on findings in Kearney, Levine, Pardue (2020), The Puzzle of Falling Birth Rates in the United States, which concludes that the decline in birth rates has been fueled more by a ...
The Economic Case for Smart Investing in America’s Youth
The United States spends a relatively small sum on children, both on a per capita basis and as a share of all spending. In 2019, the federal government spent an estimated $5,595 per child on programs benefiting children under 18, compared to $29,189 per elderly American on entitlement programs alone—a gap that remains wide even ...
Introduction: Building a More Resilient US Economy
The post-pandemic US economy features a strong labor market but also persistent inflation, rising levels of debt, and acute educational challenges. These issues are compounded by ongoing, systemic difficulties: domestic and global, economic and political. This policy volume considers these topics and others, with a thematic focus on building a more resilient US economy. The ...