In Memoriam: Georgianna Alice Mitchell Rivlin, 1931-2019

Alice Rivlin, educator, founding director of the Congressional Budget Office, former vice chair of the Federal Reserve System, and a longtime researcher at the Brookings Institution, passed at her home in Washington, D.C., on May 14, 2019. She was 88 years old and had suffered from cancer.

Dr. Rivlin joined the Brookings Institution as a research fellow in 1957, and would remain affiliated with the institution for the next 60 years, leaving for periods of civil service. From 1968 to 1969, she served on President Johnson administration in what is now the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at what was then called the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. In 1975, she became the founding director of the newly created Congressional Budget Office, a position she held until 1983. After her time with at CBO, she returned to Brookings, where she was appointed director of the Economic Studies program. That same year, she received a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” for forging new links between academic research and federal policies.

Later in her career, she served in the Clinton administration as chair of the D.C. Financial Control Board until the board was dissolved and later was appointed the Federal Reserve Board, where she served as vice chair. During the Obama administration, she was named to the Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. She also was president of the American Economics Association.

Dr. Rivlin was the author of Reviving the American Dream: The Economy, the States, and the Federal Government (Brookings Institution, 1992). She taught at Harvard University, Georgetown University, and George Washington University.

Dr. Rivlin was a 1952 graduate of Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, where she majored in economics. She earned a master’s degree and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.