Elizabeth Oltmans Ananat is the Mallya Professor of Women and Economics at Barnard College, Columbia University. She received a master’s degree in public policy from the University of Michigan, and a PhD in economics from MIT. In 2010, she served as senior economist for labor, education, and welfare at the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
Her research focuses on causal analysis of the structural dynamics of poverty and inequality. She has studied the effects of residential racial segregation, women’s access to reproductive healthcare, local economic downturns, and parents’ access to social programs. Her work has been published by leading journals in economics, public health, demography, and science. Her research has also been featured in media outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, and the New Republic.
Her project, “Remaking Labor and Family Policy for the Post-COVID Era: Leveraging the Pandemic’s Disruption of the Care Economy,” documents the challenges facing vulnerable families during COVID, and identifies better policies to both support them and bring about a stronger, more just society post-pandemic.
