Mary Colleen Daly is an American economist, who became the 13th President and chief executive officer of the
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (informally referred to as the San Francisco Fed) is the federal bank for the twelfth district in the United States. The twelfth district is made up of nine western states—Alaska, Arizona, California, ...
on October 1, 2018. She serves on the Federal Reserve's rate-setting
Federal Open Market Committee
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), a committee within the Federal Reserve System (the Fed), is charged under United States law with overseeing the nation's open market operations (e.g., the Fed's buying and selling of United States Treas ...
on a rotating basis. Previously, Daly was the Executive Vice President and Director of Research of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, which she joined as an economist in 1996.
Her research is in the fields of macroeconomics and labor economics and focuses on labor force dynamics and on the impacts of monetary and fiscal policy. She has published influential work on wage, employment, and labor force dynamics, economic inequality, the economics of social security and disability, and evidence-based public policy.
Education and early life
Daly was born in
Ballwin, Missouri
Ballwin is a southwestern suburb of St. Louis, located in St. Louis County, Missouri, United States. The population was 31,103 as of the 2020 census.
History
Ballwin was established in 1837. The community was named for John Ball, who settled a ...
. Her father was a postal worker and her mother was a
homemaker
Homemaking is mainly an American and Canadian term for the management of a home, otherwise known as housework, housekeeping, housewifery or household management. It is the act of overseeing the organizational, day-to-day operations of a hous ...
. She said, "we were not poor, but we weren't very wealthy, either. And at some point my family just, sort of, imploded. And my siblings went to live with my grandparents and I went to live with friends. And I dropped out of high school." At the time, she was 15 years of age. By age 16, she was living on her own, working at doughnut shops and
retailer
Retail is the sale of goods and Service (economics), services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturing, manufacturers, dire ...
Target
Target may refer to:
Physical items
* Shooting target, used in marksmanship training and various shooting sports
** Bullseye (target), the goal one for which one aims in many of these sports
** Aiming point, in field artillery, f ...
, struggling to scrape together a full-time salary.
Daly went on to earn a
GED
The General Educational Development (GED) tests are a group of four subject tests which, when passed, provide certification that the test taker has United States or Canadian high school-level academic skills. It is an alternative to the US high ...
and eventually a bachelor's degree in economics and philosophy from the
University of Missouri-Kansas City
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, t ...
in 1985. She later received a master's degree from the
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univers ...
in 1987 and a
Ph.D
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...
in
economics
Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.
Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyzes ...
from the
Maxwell School
Maxwell School ( ms, Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Maxwell) is an all-boys secondary school, located north of Kuala Lumpur. The school is believed to be the oldest school in north of Kuala Lumpur as well as one of the oldest in Kuala Lumpur an ...
post-doctoral fellowship
A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral research position is to pu ...
at
National Institute of Aging
The National Institute on Aging (NIA) is a division of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), located in Bethesda, Maryland. The NIA itself is headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland.
The NIA leads a broad scientific effort to understand the ...
at
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world.
Charte ...
in 1996.
Career
In 1996, Daly joined the San Francisco Fed as a research economist. She steadily rose through the ranks of the research department, becoming Executive Vice President and Director of Research in 2017. Her research has focused on labor market dynamics and the aggregate and distributional impacts of monetary and fiscal policy. She has published work on economic inequality, wage and unemployment dynamics, increasing output through workforce development, and disability and retirement policy.
Daly considers
Janet Yellen
Janet Louise Yellen (born August 13, 1946) is an American economist serving as the 78th United States secretary of the treasury since January 26, 2021. She previously served as the 15th chair of the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2018. Yellen is ...
a mentor, stating that her career "just kind of exploded" after Yellen was named president of the San Francisco Fed in 2004 (Yellen went on to become the Fed's vice chair in 2010, and later its chair in 2014.)
On October 1, 2018, Daly became the 13th President and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, succeeding John C. Williams, who left in June 2018 to become the President and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Other
In May 2019, Daly served as the commencement speaker at the 165th commencement of Syracuse University.
Selected publications
* Daly, Mary C., Greg J. Duncan, George A. Kaplan, John W. Lynch (1998). "Macro-to-Micro Linkages in the Relation between Income Inequality and Mortality", ''The Millbank Quarterly'', 76(3), 315–339, doi: 10.1111/1468-0009.00094.
* Daly, Mary C., Bart Hobijn, Ayşegül Şahin, Robert G Valletta (2012). "A Search and Matching Approach to Labor Markets: Did the Natural Rate of Unemployment Rise?", ''Journal of Economic Perspectives,'' 26(3), 3-26, doi: 10.1257/jep.26.3.3.
* Daly, Mary C., Bart Hobijn (2017). "Composition and Aggregate Real Wage Growth", ''American Economic Review (Papers and Proceedings),'' 105(7), 349–352, doi: 10.1257/aer.p20171075.
Books
* ''Lifecycle Events and Their Consequences: Job Loss, Family Change, and Declines in Health'', Stanford University Press, 2013 (co-edited with Kenneth A. Couch and Julie Zissimopoulus), .
* ''The Declining Work and Welfare of People with Disabilities: What Went Wrong and a Strategy for Change'', American Enterprise Institute Press, Washington, DC, 2011 (with Richard Burkhauser), .
* ''Income Mobility and the Middle Class'', American Enterprise Institute Press, Washington, DC, 1996 (with Richard Burkhauser, Amy D. Crews, and Stephen Jenkins), ISBN
Personal life
Daly is the first
openly gay
Coming out of the closet, often shortened to coming out, is a metaphor used to describe LGBT people's self-disclosure of their sexual orientation, romantic orientation, or gender identity.
Framed and debated as a privacy issue, coming out of ...
woman to lead a regional Federal Reserve bank, joining
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta
The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, (informally referred to as the Atlanta Fed and the Bank), is the sixth district of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks of the United States and is headquartered in midtown Atlanta, Georgia.
The Atlanta Fed cover ...
President
Raphael Bostic
Raphael W. Bostic (born June 5, 1966) is an American economist, academic, and public servant who has served as the 15th president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta since 2017.
See also
*
Federal Reserve System
The Federal Reserve System (often shortened to the Federal Reserve, or simply the Fed) is the central banking system of the United States of America. It was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, after a ...