Heather Boushey

Heather Boushey
Born	1970 Seattle, Washington, United States
Nationality	American
Institution	United States Congress Joint Economic Committee Center for American Progress
Field	Labor economics
Alma mater	Hampshire College (B.A.) New School for Social Research Ph.D.)
Information at IDEAS / RePEc

Heather Marie Boushey (born 1970) is the executive director and chief economist at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, a research center founded to accelerate cutting-edge analysis into whether and how structural changes in the U.S. economy, particularly related to economic inequality, affect economic growth, and Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, a U.S. think tank.

Life and career

Boushey was born in Seattle and grew up in Mukilteo, Washington. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from the New School for Social Research and her B.A. from Hampshire College.

She was formerly a Senior Economist with the United States Congress Joint Economic Committee and before that, with the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the Economic Policy Institute. Her work focuses on the U.S. labor market, social policy, and work and family issues. Boushey’s work ranges from examinations of current trends in the U.S. labor market and how families balance work and child care needs to how young people have fared in today’s economy and health insurance coverage. She has testified before the U.S. Congress and authored numerous reports and commentaries on issues affecting working families, including the implications of the 1996 welfare reform. She is a co-author of The State of Working America 2002–3 and Hardships in America: The Real Story of Working Families.

Boushey is a Research Affiliate with the National Poverty Center at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and on the editorial review board of WorkingUSA and the Journal of Poverty. Her work has appeared in Dollars & Sense, In These Times, and New Labor Forum, and peer-reviewed journals, including Review of Political Economy and National Women’s Studies Association Journal.

On March 31, 2007, Boushey married Todd Tucker, formerly research director of the Global Trade Watch division of Public Citizen, who specializes in the legal, economic and political consequences of trade agreements, including the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

On September 13, 2011, Boushey testified before The Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs, Stimulus Oversight, and Government Spending regarding the latest jobs proposal from President Barack Obama.

Interventions in "Mommy Wars"

In response to a series of articles in the New York Times that claimed that highly educated women were dropping out of the labor force, Boushey published results of econometric analysis that showed that the opposite was true and that these women—along with women and workers in the economy as a whole—were merely suffering the effects of the U.S. recession and jobless recovery. Bureau of Labor Statistics economists Emy Sok and Sharon Cohany found that, in 2005, the participation rate of married mothers with preschoolers was 60%, about 4 percentage points lower than its peak in 1997 and 1998. Economist Saul Hoffman found that, between 1984 and 2004, the presence of children has had a smaller negative impact on the labor force participation of all women aged 25–44 years. This finding confirms Boushey’s report of a declining child penalty. However, this effect varies greatly by marital status: The labor force participation rate of single mothers aged 25–44 years increased 9 percentage points between 1993 and 2000, while the rate for single women aged 25–44 years with children aged 5 years or younger jumped a full 14 percentage points over the same period. In contrast, the labor force participation rate for married mothers increased 1 percentage point, and the rate for married women with children aged 5 years or younger was flat.

Selected publications

• Boushey, Heather and Ann O'Leary (eds.). The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything, Center for American Progress, October 2009.
• Albelda, Randy, Heather Boushey, Elizabeth Chimienti, Rebecca Ray and Ben Zipperer. Bridging the Gaps: A Picture of How Work Supports Work in Ten States, Center for Economic and Policy Research, October 2007.
• Boushey, Heather, Shawn Fremstad, Rachel Gragg, and Margy Waller. Understanding Low-Wage Work in the United States, Center for Economic and Policy Research, March 2007.
• Boushey, Heather and John Schmitt. Impact of Proposed Minimum-Wage Increase on Low-income Families, Center for Economic and Policy Research, December 2005.
• Boushey, Heather. Are women opting out? Debunking the myth, Center for Economic and Policy Research, November 2005.
• Boushey, Heather and Joseph Wright. Workers Receiving Employer-Provided Health Insurance, Center for Economic and Policy Research, April 2004.
• Baiman, Ron, Heather Boushey and Dawn Saunders. Political economy and contemporary capitalism : radical perspectives on economic theory and policy. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2000, ISBN 978-0-7656-0529-0.
• Mutari, Ellen, Heather Boushey and William Fraher. Gender and political economy : incorporating diversity into theory and policy. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1997, ISBN 978-1-56324-996-9.

External links

• Interview with Heather Boushey for the Sloan Work and Family Research Network
• Publications by Heather Boushey from CEPR website
• Publications by Heather Boushey from EPI website
• Testimony of Heather Boushey before the Committee on Education and the Workforce of the U.S. House of Representatives
• "Opt Out Hype," a paper by Heather Boushey on the Mommy Wars
• Response from Linda Hirshman in "Inside Higher Education"