Alice Rivlin

Alice Rivlin
Name	Alice Rivlin
Caption	Official portrait, 1996
Birth name	Alice Mitchell
Birth date	4 March 1931
Birth place	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Death date	14 May 2019
Death place	Washington, D.C., U.S.
Education	Bryn Mawr College (BA), Radcliffe College (MA, PhD)
Spouse	Lewis A. Rivlin (m. 1955; div. 1977), Sidney G. Winter (m. 1989)
Known for	Founding Director of the Congressional Budget Office, Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve
Office	Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors
Term start	June 25, 1996
Term end	July 16, 1999
President	Bill Clinton
Predecessor	Alan Blinder
Successor	Roger W. Ferguson Jr.
Office1	Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget
Term start1	January 20, 1993
Term end1	August 31, 1994
President1	Bill Clinton
Predecessor1	William A. Niskanen
Successor1	John A. Koskinen
Office2	Director of the Congressional Budget Office
Term start2	February 24, 1975
Term end2	August 31, 1983
Predecessor2	Position established
Successor2	Rudolph G. Penner

Alice Rivlin was a pioneering American economist and public servant whose career spanned over five decades, fundamentally shaping federal budget policy and economic governance. As the first director of the Congressional Budget Office, she established its reputation for rigorous, nonpartisan analysis, and later served as Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve under Chairman Alan Greenspan. Her work across multiple presidential administrations, from Lyndon B. Johnson to Bill Clinton, focused on fiscal responsibility, health care reform, and urban policy, earning her widespread respect as a pragmatic and influential voice in Washington, D.C..

Early life and education

Born in Philadelphia, she was raised in Bloomington, Indiana, where her father was a physicist at Indiana University. She attended Bryn Mawr College, graduating with a degree in economics in 1952, and went on to earn a master's degree and a doctorate in economics from Radcliffe College at Harvard University in 1955 and 1958, respectively. Her doctoral dissertation, which analyzed the CIO's role in the 1952 presidential election, foreshadowed her lifelong interest in the intersection of politics and economic policy.

Career in public policy

Her early career included research positions at the Brookings Institution and serving as an assistant secretary for policy development at the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare under President Lyndon B. Johnson. During the 1970s, she directed economic studies at Brookings and served on the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. She was a key figure in debates over federal revenue sharing and authored influential books on systemic reform, including *Systematic Thinking for Social Action*.

Congressional Budget Office

In 1975, she was appointed by the Congress as the inaugural director of the newly established Congressional Budget Office, a position she held until 1983. She built the agency from the ground up, instituting a culture of objective, transparent analysis that provided critical fiscal projections and cost estimates for legislation. Under her leadership, the CBO became an indispensable and trusted resource for both the House and the Senate, navigating politically charged debates over budgets, taxes, and programs like Social Security.

Federal Reserve and later career

She served as Deputy Director and later Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Bill Clinton, playing a central role in crafting the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993. In 1996, Clinton appointed her to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, where she served as Vice Chair until 1999, working closely with Chairman Alan Greenspan. Later, she co-chaired the Dominion-funded Rivlin-Domenici Commission on debt reduction, served on the District of Columbia Financial Control Board, and was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a professor at Georgetown University.

Personal life and death

She was married to attorney Lewis A. Rivlin from 1955 until their divorce in 1977; they had three children. In 1989, she married economist Sidney G. Winter. A resident of Washington, D.C., she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma and died from complications of the disease at her home in the Capitol Hill neighborhood on May 14, 2019.

Legacy and honors

Her legacy is that of a trailblazer who brought analytical rigor and bipartisan credibility to federal fiscal policy. Among her numerous honors, she received the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in 1983 and the Paul H. Douglas Award for Ethics in Government. The Alice M. Rivlin Award was established at the National Academy of Public Administration in her honor, and she was awarded the President's Medal from her alma mater, Bryn Mawr College. She is remembered as a model public servant whose work at the Congressional Budget Office, the Federal Reserve, and the White House left a lasting imprint on American economic governance.

Category:American economists Category:Directors of the Congressional Budget Office Category:Vice Chairs of the Federal Reserve Category:1931 births Category:2019 deaths