Melissa S. Kearney profile and economic research focus

Melissa S. Kearney is an economist serving as the Gilbert F. Schaefer Professor of Economics at the University of Notre Dame and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. Her professional roles include serving as the 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 focuses on US poverty, inequality, domestic policy, and the economics of families and fertility. She is the author of ‘The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind’. Her previous academic experience includes a professorship at the University of Maryland and directing the Hamilton Project at Brookings.