Mingli Zhong

Mingli Zhong is a senior research associate in the Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population 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 (NBER). Zhong received the Urban Institute’s President’s Award for Technology Innovation in Research & Data Science in 2023 and the Equity & Inclusion Young Professionals Fellowship from the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) in 2022. Her doctoral dissertation received the Social Security Administration Dissertation Fellowship Program in Retirement and Disability Research and Robert R. Nathan Fellowship. She received a PhD from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. 

Zhong’s research focuses on household finance, behavioral economics, and labor economics. She studies household wealth and debt, retirement savings, and wealth disparities. She also studies the interaction between private savings and the social safety net. Her recent projects focus on debt at older ages, the racial wealth gap, the impact of COVID-19-era economic policies on households with low incomes in the US and UK, and the optimal design of retirement plans. 

Zhong’s research has been funded by AARP, Capital One, Institute for Child Success, JPMorgan Chase, Pew Charitable Trusts, the Boettner Center/Pension Research Council at Wharton, the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, the Social Security Administration, the TIAA Institute, and the US Department of Labor. Her research has been cited by media outlets including the American Society of Pension Professionals and Actuaries, MarketWatch, Marketplace, NewsNation, NPR, PlanSponsor, and USA Today. 

Contact information

Email: mzhong (at) urban (dot) org