Inequality and Economy
Working under tough circumstances is nothing new for Redbird, who faced her own hurdles in getting to Northwestern. Redbird never thought she’d go to college, much less end up as a faculty member in a department full of “nice, kind, wonderful people.”
“Growing up, no one asked me, ‘What are you going to do when you grow up?’” she says. “There was never a presumption of SAT or ACT prep in my high school because there was never a presumption that any of us would go to college.”
Redbird was raised in rural Colorado, where, as she puts it, “you literally crossed a train track and changed economic systems.” Redbird grew up on the border between a wealthy community and a poorer one, offering her an early-life look at the economic diversity that now preoccupies her research.
“It was fascinating to see people’s different understandings and to observe how things worked on one side of the tracks — from what’s considered ‘middle class’ to the role of government regulation,” Redbird says, “and then to see how different those beliefs and structures were on the other side.”
Living in poverty in her late teens, Redbird worked part time as a bank teller while in school. “I was trying to hold down a job because you have to eat,” she says.
Redbird went on to community college and eventually earned her bachelor’s degree. She worked in community development in Ohio, helping people save money for affordable housing, while her now-husband was attending law school at the Ohio State University.
Gathering data on whether financial literacy programs helped people save up for their first home, Redbird realized she had fallen into research and loved the work. She approached the economics department of her husband’s university, offering them access to the data she had collected in exchange for research training.
The department took the deal, and after two years of research collaboration, Redbird and her husband moved to California, where Redbird would earn her PhD from Stanford University.
“It took a long time — almost a decade — but I accomplished it eventually,” she says of her graduate education.
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