Toward an Inclusive Recovery

Improving Labor Force Attachment and Financial Security Among Low-income and Marginalized Workers

A Federal Reserve Community Development Research Seminar
presented by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors

Panel speakers

Marianne Bitler

Marianne Bitler

Professor of Economics at the University of California, Davis

Marianne Bitler is a Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Davis; a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research; and a Research Fellow at IZA. She received her PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1998. Her research focuses on the effects of the US social safety net on poverty, income, human capital, and health; economics of the family; economics of education; and health economics. She has served on a number of National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine expert panels related to food assistance programs and food and nutrition.

Eliza Forsythe

Eliza Forsythe

Assistant Professor at the School of Labor & Employment Relations and Department of Economics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Eliza Forsythe is an assistant professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the Labor and Employment Relations School and the Department of Economics.  She is a labor economist who researches employer behavior, careers, and public policy.  Her recent research focuses on labor markets during the Covid-19 pandemic, with research on labor demand, demographic disparities, and the unemployment insurance system. She received her PhD From MIT and completed a postdoc at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.

Todd Greene

Todd Greene

Institute Fellow at the Urban Institute, Executive Director of WorkRise

Todd Greene is an institute fellow and the executive director of WorkRise, a research-to-action network on jobs, workers, and mobility hosted by the Urban Institute. Before joining Urban, Greene was executive director of the Atlanta University Center Consortium (AUCC), the world’s oldest and largest consortium of historically Black colleges and universities. Prior to AUCC Greene was a vice president in the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s research division where he led the Federal Reserve System’s Human Capital/Workforce Development Working Group and oversaw creation of the Center for Workforce and Economic Opportunity.

Greene is co-editor of two books, Transforming U.S. Workforce Development Policies for the 21st Century (2015) and Investing in America’s Workforce: Improving Outcomes for Workers and Employers (2018). He chairs the Hedrich Center for Workforce Development national advisory board, is vice chair of the International Economic Development Council, and serves on the boards of the Corporation for a Skilled Workforce, and Invest Atlanta.

Claire Montialoux

Claire Montialoux

Assistant Professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley

Claire Montialoux is an assistant professor at the Goldman School and works at the intersection of public policy, economics and data science. Her research studies policies aimed at reducing deeprooted inequalities in the labor market, with a particular focus on minimum wages and racial earnings gaps. Prior to her doctoral studies, Montialoux served as Deputy Head of Tax Policy Analysis at the French Treasury. Montialoux received a Ph.D. in Economics from ENSAE ParisTech-CREST-Polytechnique, an M.Sc. in applied Statistics at ENSAE ParisTech and in Economics at the Paris School of Economics, and a B.A. in Econometrics and Sociology from École Normale Supérieure (Paris-Saclay).

Jonathan Morduch

Jonathan Morduch

Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University, Executive Director of the Financial Access Initiative

Jonathan Morduch is Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University. He focuses on questions at the intersection of finance and inequality. At NYU, Morduch is the Executive Director of the Financial Access Initiative. His research ranges from RCTs and natural experiments to closely-observed diaries of families living with scarcity. He is the author with Rachel Schneider of The Financial Diaries: How American Families Cope in a World of Uncertainty (Princeton 2017) and a co-author of Portfolios of the Poor: How the World’s Poor Live on $2 a Day (Princeton 2009). Morduch has also co-written The Economics of Microfinance (MIT Press 2010).

Angela Rachidi

Angela Rachidi

Senior Fellow and Rowe Scholar, American Enterprise Institute

Angela Rachidi, PhD is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where she studies poverty and the impact of safety net programs on low-income individuals and families. Her research focuses on the intersection of poverty and employment, with expertise in income-support programs such as TANF, SNAP, the earned income tax credit/child tax credit, and childcare assistance. Prior to joining AEI, she was the deputy commissioner for policy research at the New York City Department of Social Services.

Chris Rauh

Christopher Rauh

University Lecturer at the University of Cambridge, Fellow at Trinity College Cambridge

Christopher Rauh is Lecturer at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow at Trinity College. His fields are Labor Economics and Political Economy. He works with complex datasets and applied methodologies, including machine learning and structural modelling. He primarily focuses on topics related to inequality and intergenerational mobility.

Robert Valletta

Senior Vice President and Associate Director of Research at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

Rob Valletta is Associate Director of Research in the Economic Research Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (FRBSF). In addition to general department leadership, his key duties at FRBSF include providing advice on monetary policy, overseeing the department’s external publications, and supporting the public speeches of the bank President and other senior staff.

Rob’s scholarly research is primarily in the field of labor economics, including topics such as unemployment insurance, structural unemployment, part-time work, job security and job mobility, income inequality and poverty, and the effects of employer-provided health insurance on labor market outcomes. He has published widely in peer-reviewed economics journals.

Rob began his FRBSF career in 1995, following his employment as a lecturer and then assistant professor at the University of California, Irvine. He completed his Ph.D. in economics at Harvard University in 1987 and prior to that obtained an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1982.