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Linda Giannarelli
Senior Fellow
Project Director for Maintenance and Development of the TRIM3 Model
Income and Benefits Policy Center
Microsimulation modeling is an incredibly powerful tool for answering questions about how safety-net policies affect families and for comparing the potential impacts of alternative policy changes. Part of what keeps me at Urban is the depth and talent of the team that develops the TRIM3 and ATTIS models and the NICC calculator. Over the last dozen years, the team used TRIM and ATTIS in a series of projects to estimate antipoverty impacts for national and state policy organizations and state poverty commissions. The results have sometimes confirmed prior expectations, but at other times they have surprised us and led to new insights. In the years ahead, we want to expand access to this type of analysis.

Linda Giannarelli is a senior fellow in the Income and Benefits Policy Center at the Urban Institute, where her work focuses on the operation of the US social safety net and the potential for improving the economic well-being of low-income families. Her research career has included analyses of the full range of US safety net programs giving her a deep understanding of the individual programs and their interactions.

Much of her work involves microsimulation modeling. She coleads the work to maintain and develop the Transfer Income Model, version 3 (TRIM3), and she leads work on a new state-level model—Analysis of Transfers, Taxes, and Income Security (ATTIS). Since 2007, Giannarelli has led or coled a series of projects using TRIM3 and ATTIS to examine how various policy changes—including changes in government benefit programs, minimum wage increases, and transitional jobs programs—could reduce poverty at the national level and in specific states. A nationally recognized expert in microsimulation modeling, Giannarelli has contributed her expertise to government panels and other research groups.

Giannarelli also leads the development of the Net Income Change Calculator, an online tool that explores the impact of increased earnings on family economic well-being, taking into account the impact of both benefits and taxes. She was instrumental in the creation of both the Welfare Rules Database and the Child Care and Development Fund Policies Database, and she continues to provide senior guidance for those projects.

Giannarelli holds an MA in economics from the George Washington University.

Research Areas
Wealth and financial well-being
Families
Immigration
Social safety net
Health and health care
Children and youth
Tags
Kids in context
From Safety Net to Solid Ground
Families with low incomes
Student parents