All families need opportunities to thrive and prosper. Wealth is not just for the wealthy. Wealth is where economic opportunity lies.
Signe-Mary McKernan is vice president of the Family and Financial Well-Being Division at the Urban Institute. She is a wealth and financial well-building expert with two decades of experience researching access to assets and credit and the impact of safety net programs. She coedited the book Asset Building and Low-Income Families, coauthored a chapter in the Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Poverty, and advised the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in setting up its research unit. Before joining Urban, she was lead economist on credit issues at the Federal Trade Commission. She has been a visiting and adjunct professor at Georgetown University.
McKernan has extensive experience leading large projects and using rigorous econometric methods, randomized controlled trials, and administrative and survey data to evaluate programs and policies. Her research has been published in books, policy briefs, reports, and refereed journals, including the Journal of Public Economics, American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, Demography, and Review of Economics and Statistics. She has testified before Congress and the District of Columbia Council and has been cited in media outlets such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Forbes, and Time.
Her consumer finance research includes credit and financial health, wealth-building policies and programs (e.g., matched savings accounts, 530As, child savings accounts, and baby bonds), financial products and services, the COVID-19 pandemic and the Great Recession, and wealth inequities. Her safety net research evaluates the effectiveness of social programs in improving material hardship and financial well-being. She has a PhD in economics from Brown University.
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