Dr. Misty L. Heggeness is an associate professor of public affairs and economics at the University of Kansas and formerly a principal economist and senior advisor at the U.S. Census Bureau. She has over a decade of experience as a federal research economist. Her study on citizenship was used in the Supreme Court's Department of Commerce v. New York case to argue whether a citizenship question could be added to the 2020 Census, and her research on the impact of pandemic closures on mothers' labor supply has been widely cited in the media.
Dr. Heggeness was one of the first to highlight that mothers bounced back to work more quickly than other women after March 2020 and that remote work did not necessarily help mothers lean into work when childcare was unavailable. Her research focuses more generally on poverty & inequality, gender economics, the highly skilled workforce, and innovations in federal statistics and has been featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, The Economist, and Science. Her new book SWIFTYNOMICS is forthcoming from the University of California Press in 2025.