Melissa Schettini Kearney (born 1974) is the Neil Moskowitz Professor of Economics at the
University of Maryland, College Park
The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of Mary ...
and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). She is also director of the Aspen Economic Strategy Group; a non-resident Senior Fellow at
The Brookings Institution
The Brookings Institution, often stylized as simply Brookings, is an American research group founded in 1916. Located on Think Tank Row (Washington DC), Think Tank Row in Washington, D.C., the organization conducts research and education in the s ...
; a scholar affiliate and member of the board of the
Notre Dame Wilson-Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities (LEO); and a scholar affiliate of the MIT
Abdul Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). She has been an editorial board member of the
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy since 2019 and of the
Journal of Economic Literature
The ''Journal of Economic Literature'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal, published by the American Economic Association, that surveys the academic literature in economics. It was established in 1963 as the ''Journal of Economic Abstracts'', since 2017. Kearney served as director of the
Hamilton Project The Hamilton Project is an economic policy initiative within the Brookings Institution. It was originally launched in April 2006 by a combination of public policy makers, business people, academic leaders, and other former Clinton administration ec ...
at Brookings from 2013 to 2015 and as co-chair of the JPAL State and Local Innovation Initiative from 2015 to 2018.
Kearney graduated with highest honors from
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
with an A.B. in economics in 1996 and was inducted as a member of
Phi Beta Kappa
The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal a ...
. She received the Wolf Balleisen Memorial Award from for completing her 96-page long senior thesis, titled "The Economic Determinants of Age at First Birth in United States Metropolitan Areas: An Empirical Analysis", under the supervision of
Anne Case
Anne Catherine Case, Lady Deaton, (born July 27, 1958) is an American economist who is currently the Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, Emeritus, at Princeton University.
Early life and career
She graduated from ...
. She then pursued graduate studies with the support of a
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and a
Harry S. Truman Scholarship
The Harry S. Truman Scholarship is the premier graduate fellowship in the United States for public service leadership. It is a federally funded scholarship granted to U.S. undergraduate students for demonstrated leadership potential, academic ...
at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...
, where she received a
PhD in economics in 2002 after completing a doctoral dissertation, titled "Essays on public policy and consumer choice: applications to welfare reform and state lotteries", under the supervision of
Jonathan Gruber and
Joshua Angrist
Joshua David Angrist (born September 18, 1960) is an Israeli-American economist and Ford Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Angrist, together with Guido Imbens, was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics ...
.
Research
Kearney's research focuses on issues related to social policy,
poverty
Poverty is the state of having few material possessions or little income. Poverty can have diverse social, economic, and political causes and effects. When evaluating poverty in ...
, and
inequality
Inequality may refer to:
Economics
* Attention inequality, unequal distribution of attention across users, groups of people, issues in etc. in attention economy
* Economic inequality, difference in economic well-being between population groups
* ...
.
She has published numerous academic studies related to the economics of families and childbearing, including work on teen childbearing. Early in her career she published a study documenting that the controversial welfare family cap policy did not lead to a reduction in births, as intended. That policy has since been repealed in many states. More recently, in work with Phillip Levine, Kearney has published studies on the link between non-marital childbearing and childhood resources and proposed that teen childbearing is a consequence of the "economics of despair." In subsequent work published by the Brookings Institution, the authors document a similar finding with regard to high school drop-out behavior. On the issue of birth rates, a June 2020 Brookings study by Kearney and Levine predicted that the
COVID pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identifie ...
would lead to a "baby bust," despite popular accounts suggesting there would be a pandemic "
baby boom
A baby boom is a period marked by a significant increase of birth rate. This demographic phenomenon is usually ascribed within certain geographical bounds of defined national and cultural populations. People born during these periods are often ca ...
."
In work with
Phillip B. Levine, receiving attention in the popular media, she found that greater access to
Sesame Street
''Sesame Street'' is an American educational children's television series that combines live-action, sketch comedy, animation and puppetry. It is produced by Sesame Workshop (known as the Children's Television Workshop until June 2000) a ...
in the show's early days led to improved early educational outcomes for children. Kearney and Levine also found that
MTV
MTV (Originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable channel that launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a di ...
’s
16 and Pregnant and
Teen Mom
''Teen Mom'' (renamed ''Teen Mom OG'' starting with the fifth season) is an American reality television series broadcast by MTV. It is the first spin-off of '' 16 and Pregnant'', and it focuses on the lives of several young mothers as they navig ...
programs led to a sizable reduction in teen births, accounting for as much as one-third of the overall decline in teen births in the year and a half following the show's introduction in 2009.
Kearney has written extensively about income inequality, in both academic journals and policy essays, and has testified before the
Congress
A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of a ...
on the topic of U.S. income inequality. She co-authored a 2013 proposal for a Secondary Earner Tax Deduction that formed the basis for a tax proposal included in proposed legislation and in Obama's proposed 2015 budget. Kearney coauthored a 2020 study titled "Explaining the decline in the U.S. employment-to-population ratio: a review of the evidence” with former Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Katharine G. Abraham that examines employment trends for the period from 1999 to 2018 and seeks to explain the economic factors driving them. They conclude that labor demand factors are the most important drivers of the overall decline in the employment–population ratio among 25- to 54-year-olds over the period.
Selected works
* KG Abraham, MS Kearney, 2020, "Explaining the decline in the U.S. employment-to-population ratio: a review of the evidence," Journal of Economic Literature 58 (3): 585-643.
* MS Kearney, R Wilson, 2018 "Male Earnings, Marriageable Men, and Non-Marital Fertility: Evidence from the Fracking Boom," ''Review of Economics and Statistics'' 100(4): 678-690''.''
* MS Kearney, PB Levine, 2017 "The Economics of Non-Marital Childbearing and the Marriage Premium for Children," ''Annual Review of Economics'' (9).
* MS Kearney, 2016 "Should we be concerned about income inequality?" in Ed. Michael Strain, ''The U.S. Labor Market: Questions and Challenges for U.S. Policy''. Washington D.C.:
American Enterprise Institute
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, known simply as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), is a center-right Washington, D.C.–based think tank that researches government, politics, economics, and social welfare. ...
.
* MS Kearney, PB Levine, 2016 "Income Inequality, Social Mobility, and the Decision to Drop-Out of High School." ''Brookings Papers on Economic Activity''.
* MS Kearney, PB Levine, 2015 “Investigating Recent Trends in the U.S. Teen Birth Rates,” Journal of Health Economics (41).
* MS Kearney, LJ Dettling, 2014, “House Prices and Birth Rates: The Impact of the Real Estate Market on the Decision to Have a Baby,” Journal of Public Economics.
* MS Kearney, L Turner, 2013 "Giving Secondary Earners a Tax Break: A Proposal to Help Low- and Middle-Income Families." The Hamilton Project.
* MS Kearney, PB Levine, 2012 "Why is the teen birth rate in the United States so high and why does it matter?" Journal of Economic Perspectives.
* DH Autor, LF Katz, MS Kearney, 2008 "Trends in US wage inequality: Revising the revisionists" The Review of economics and statistics 90 (2), 300-323
* DH David, LF Katz, MS Kearney, 2008 "The polarization of the US labor market" American economic review 96 (2), 189-194
* J Guryan, E Hurst, M Kearney, 2008 "Parental education and parental time with children" Journal of Economic perspectives 22 (3), 23-46
* MS Kearney, 2005 "State lotteries and consumer behavior" Journal of Public Economics 89 (11–12), 2269-2299
* MS Kearney, 2004 "Is There an Effect of Incremental Welfare Benefits on Fertility Behavior? A Look at the Family Cap” Journal of Human Resources.
Policy Work
Kearney was the fifth director - and first female director - of The Hamilton Project, following a prestigious group of former directors, all of whom played significant roles in public service, including founding director
Peter Orszag
Peter Richard Orszag (born December 16, 1968) is the CEO of Financial Advisory at Lazard. Before June 2019, he was the firm's Head of North American M&A and Global Co-Head of Healthcare.
Orszag previously served as a Vice Chairman of Corporate ...
, who went on to become director of the Congressional Budget Office and then director of the White House Office of Management and Budget,
Jason Furman
Jason Furman (born August 18, 1970) is an American economist and professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. On June 10, 2013, Furman was named b ...
, who subsequently served as chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, and
Douglas Elmendorf
Douglas William Elmendorf (born April 16, 1962) is an American economist who is the dean and Don K. Price Professor of Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He previously served as the Director of the Congressional Budget Off ...
, who subsequently directed the Congressional Budget Office and is now Dean of the Kennedy School at Harvard University. Under Kearney's leadership, the Hamilton Project worked on a variety of policy topics, including domestic poverty, labor market challenges and the future of work, and mass incarceration. Together with
Benjamin H. Harris, Kearney co-edited the Hamilton Project book Policies to Address Poverty in America.
Kearney has served as Director of the Aspen Economic Strategy Group since 2017. The Aspen Economic Strategy Group (AESG) was launched in 2017 under the leadership of co-chairs Henry M. Paulson, Jr., former secretary of the Treasury and chairman of Goldman Sachs, and Erskine Bowles, former White House chief of staff and president of the University of North Carolina system.
Amy Ganz, formerly of Andreessen Horowitz, is the group’s deputy director. The AESG fosters the exchange of economic policy ideas and seeks to clarify the lines of debate on emerging economic issues while promoting bipartisan relationship-building among current and future generations of policy leaders in Washington.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kearney, Melissa S.
American women economists
21st-century American economists
University of Maryland, College Park faculty
MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences alumni
Princeton University alumni
Living people
Labor economists
1974 births