Mingli Zhong

Mingli Zhong is a senior research associate in the Family and Financial Well-Being Division at the Urban Institute and a Visiting Scholar at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to joining Urban, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). 

Zhong’s work has been recognized with the Urban Institute’s President’s Award for Technology Innovation in Research & Data Science (2023) and the Equity & Inclusion Young Professionals Fellowship from the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) (2022). Her doctoral dissertation received funding from the Social Security Administration Dissertation Fellowship. She holds a PhD from the Wharton School.

Her research lies at the intersection of household and consumer finance, labor economics, and behavioral economics. She focuses on financial health and well-being, savings, investment, and borrowing behaviors, and wealth inequality. Recent projects have examined debt in later life, the optimal design of retirement systems, the interplay of private savings, workplace benefits, and social programs, and the impacts of pandemic-era economic policies on vulnerable households in the U.S. and U.K.

Zhong’s research has been supported by AARP, Capital One Foundation, JPMorgan Chase Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts, TIAA Institute, the U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the U.S. Social Security Administration, and the Wharton School. Her work has been published in leading economics journals such as the Journal of Public Economics and the American Economic Review Papers & Proceedings , and has been featured in prominent media outlets such as Bloomberg, MarketWatch, New York Times, NPR, and Washington Post. 

Contact information

Email: mzhong (at) urban (dot) org