Heather Marie Boushey^[1] (born 1970) is the executive director and chief economist at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, a think tank 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. She is the author of Finding Time: The Economics of Work-Life Conflict, published in 2016 by Harvard University Press.^[2][3] In August 2016, it was announced that Boushey would have served as Chief Economist of Hillary Clinton's presidential transition team had she won.^[4]

Boushey was born in Seattle and grew up in Mukilteo, Washington.^[5] 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 was 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,^[1] 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.^[6]

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.^[7] 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.^[8]

Boushey was announced as Chief Economist on the Clinton-Kaine Transition Project following the Democratic National Convention in July 2016.^[9]