Welcome back to The Mixtape with Scott, the podcast where we explore the personal stories behind the professional lives of economists. I’m your host, Scott Cunningham, coming to you from Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Each week, we dive into the journeys, insights, and lives of economists whose work shapes how we understand the world.

This week’s guest is Elizabeth Cascio. Elizabeth studies education, public policy, and the well-being of children. Her research often looks at big policy changes in 20th-century America, like the spread of publicly funded early education and major civil rights, education, and immigration laws. Recently, she’s focused on childcare and early education, trying to understand how policy design, economic conditions, and political voice shape educational attainment and economic mobility.

Elizabeth’s work has been published in leading economics journals, including The Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, and The Journal of Public Economics. She’s also written policy pieces for The Hamilton Project. She’s a professor at Dartmouth College and holds research affiliations with the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Institute for the Study of Labor. She’s served on editorial boards and is currently an editor at The Journal of Labor Economics.

This episode is also part of a series I’ve been doing called “The Students of…,” where I talk to students of economists in areas I’m particularly interested in. One of those areas is “The Students of David Card.” Elizabeth earned her Ph.D. at Berkeley, where David Card and Ken Chay—both key figures in the development of causal inference within labor economics—were significant influences on her work. Once you hear about her research, their impact becomes clear.

Elizabeth’s work touches on economic history, but she’s primarily a labor economist and public policy researcher. She uses history as a tool to understand policy and its impacts on children and families. Her work connects the past to the present in ways that make big questions about education and mobility clearer.

So, let’s jump in. Please join me in welcoming Elizabeth Cascio to The Mixtape with Scott. Elizabeth, thanks for being here.