Mingli Zhong is a senior research associate in the Family and Financial Well-Being Division at the Urban Institute. She is also a visiting scholar at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Before joining Urban, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Zhong’s research focuses on household and consumer finance. She examines saving, spending, and borrowing behavior. She studies the interaction between private savings and the social safety net. Her recent projects address the optimal design of automatic enrollment retirement plans, the impact of the expansion of automatic enrollment plans on low-income workers, and spending and borrowing patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Zhong also studies the labor market, especially the impacts of the gig economy on labor market participation, income security, and retirement decisions.

Zhong’s research has been funded by AARP, the Boettner Center/Pension Research Council at Wharton, the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Social Security Administration. She has been interviewed by government officials and business leaders as an emerging expert on household financial security. Her research has been cited by the Brookings Institution, MarketWatch, Marketplace, NBER Digest, ThinkAdvisor, and 401k Specialist.

Zhong received a PhD in applied economics from the University of Pennsylvania. Her doctoral dissertation received the Social Security Administration Dissertation Fellowship Program in Retirement and Disability Research and Robert R. Nathan Fellowship.