Martha Bailey is a Professor of Economics at UCLA and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Bailey received her B.A. from Agnes Scott College in 1997 and her Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University in 2005. She currently serves on the board of editors at the American Economic Review and Journal of Economic Literature and is an elected member of executive boards of the American Economic Association and Society of Labor Economists and the Board of Trustees at the Economic History Association and Cliometric Society.

 

Bailey’s research focuses on issues in labor economics, demography and health in the United States within the long-run perspective of economic history. Her work has examined the implications of the diffusion of modern contraception for women’s childbearing, career decisions, and compensation and the shorter and longer-term effects of Great Society programs, including a co-edited book entitled the Legacies of the War on Poverty.  Her research has won the IZA Prize for the Best Young Labor Economist, the Arthur H. Cole Prize for the best article in the Journal of Economic History, and the CESifo Distinguished Research Affiliate Award for Best Paper by an Economist under 35. Bailey's work has recently appeared in the American Economic Review and Quarterly Journal of Economics and has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation. Bailey has also won several college-level awards for outstanding teaching, including most recently the 2017 John Dewey Teaching Award.