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    Melissa Kearney
    Visiting Fellow
    Short Bio

    Melissa S. Kearney is a Hoover visiting fellow and a professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame. She is director of the Aspen Economic Strategy Group and a research associate of the NBER. Kearney is an expert on US poverty, inequality, domestic policy, and the economics of families and fertility. She holds a PhD in economics from MIT.

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    To view, the complete bio visit https://www.hoover.org/profiles/melissa-kearney.

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Melissa S. Kearney is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and 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. Kearney's research and writing focus on US poverty, inequality, domestic policy, and the economics of families and fertility. 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 was previously a professor of economics at the University of Maryland (2006–25), director of the Hamilton Project at Brookings (2013–15), and cochair of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology J-PAL State and Local Innovation Initiative (2015–18). She has served in editorial positions for the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy; Journal of Economic Literature; Journal of Human Resources; Demography; and The Future of Children. She is the author of The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind (University of Chicago Press, 2023.) Kearney teaches public economics at both the undergraduate and PhD level. She holds a BA in economics from Princeton University and a PhD in economics from MIT.

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