Valerie Rawlston Wilson is an American labor economist who directs the

Economic Policy Institute The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit American, left-leaning think tank based in Washington, D.C., that carries out economic research and analyzes the economic impact of policies and proposals. Affiliated with the labor mo ...

’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy. She researches and writes about economic inequality in the United States in employment and training, income and wealth disparities, access to higher education, and social insurance. She was previously vice president of research at the

National Urban League The National Urban League, formerly known as the National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes, is a nonpartisan historic civil rights organization based in New York City that advocates on behalf of economic and social justice for African Am ...

Washington Bureau. In June 2022, she testified before the United States Congressional Committee on Education and Labor on how

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

widened racial inequities in education, health, and the workforce. She was the 2022 president of the

National Economic Association The National Economic Association (NEA) is a learned society established in 1969, focused on initiatives in the field of economics. The purposes of the Association are "to promote the professional lives of minorities within the profession. In a ...

. Wilson attended

Hampton University Hampton University is a private, historically black, research university in Hampton, Virginia. Founded in 1868 as Hampton Agricultural and Industrial School, it was established by Black and White leaders of the American Missionary Association af ...

and earned a

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...

in economics from the

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States ...

Selected works

* Wilson, Valerie Rawlston. "The effect of attending an HBCU on persistence and graduation outcomes of African-American college students." The Review of Black Political Economy 34, no. 1-2 (2007): 11–52. * Rawlston-Wilson, Valerie, Susie Saavedra, and Shree Chauhan. "From access to completion: A seamless path to college graduation for African American students." (2014). * Wilson, Valerie Rawlston, and Renee R. Hanson. "Effective policies for promoting early behavioral development." Harvard Journal Of African American Public Policy (2009): 1555–66. * Gould, Elise Lorraine, and Valerie Rawlston-Wilson. Black Workers Face Two of the Most Lethal Preexisting Conditions for Coronavirus—racism and Economic Inequality: Report. Economic Policy Institute, 2020. * Wilson, Valerie Rawlston. "African Americans & the Green Revolution: A Report from the National Urban League Policy Institute."

References

African-American economists Hampton University alumni American women economists Living people Labor economists University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumni Year of birth missing (living people) Presidents of the National Economic Association 21st-century African-American people 21st-century African-American women 21st-century American economists {{US-economist-stub