Rebecca M. Blank was nominated by the President to be a Member of the Council of Economic Advisers on November 5, 1997. She is on leave as Professor of Economics at Northwestern University. Prior to coming to the CEA, she served as the first Director of the Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research and was also a member of the research faculty at NU's Institute for Policy Research. Prior to Northwestern, she taught at Princeton University and served for a year as a Senior Staff Economist with the Council of Economic Advisers. She holds a Ph.D in economics from M.I.T.

Professor Blank's research has focused on the interaction between the macroeconomy, government anti-poverty programs, and the behavior and well-being of low-income families. Recent research includes several studies of the relationship between economic growth and income distribution over the 1980s, a book comparing social protection programs between the U.S. and other industrialized countries, Social Protection vs. Economic Flexibility: Is There a Trade-off? and research on the dynamic patterns of participation in AFDC and Food Stamp programs. Professor Blank has published extensively in economics and policy-related journals, and serves on a variety of professional and advisory boards. In 1993, she received the David Kershaw award, given bi-annually to the young scholar whose work has had the most impact on policy. Her latest book, It Takes A Nation: A New Agenda for Fighting Poverty, was published by Princeton University Press in 1997 and analyzes the recent discussion about poverty and public policy in the United States.

Within the economics profession, Professor Blank has served on the executive committee of the American Economic Association (AEA) and chaired the AEA's Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession. She has also been co-editor of the Journal of Human Resources, and on the board of editors of the American Economic Review, the Journal of Public Economics, the Journal of Economic Education, and Feminist Economics.

Professor Blank is married to Johannes Kuttner and has one daughter.