Melissa S. Kearney

Director, Aspen Economic Strategy Group

Gilbert F. Schaefer Professor of Economics, University of Notre Dame

MMELISSA S. KEARNEY is the Gilbert F. Schaefer Professor of Economics at the University of Notre Dame. 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 the Neil Moskowitz Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland, Director of the Hamilton Project at Brookings, and co-chair of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology J-PAL State and Local Innovation Initiative. Kearney’s research focuses on US poverty, inequality, social policy, and the economics of fertility and families. She has served in editorial positions for the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy; Journal of Economic Literature; Journal of Human Resources; Demography; and 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. She holds a B.A. in Economics from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT.