December 9, 2025
The W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research has welcomed Dr. Monique E. Davis, Ph.D., as an economist, expanding its staff of researchers focused on rigorous research and real-world policy recommendations. Her work is grounded in stratification economics, exploring how systemic forces and group identity shape economic outcomes.
Growing up near the south side of Chicago, Monique E. Davis, Ph.D., remembers asking her first real-world questions about inequality: “Why are some of my family members doing really well and others are not? Why are the Black neighborhoods in Chicago doing so poorly compared to white neighborhoods, especially the south side compared to the north side?” She didn’t know it then, but recognizing that imbalance and asking those questions would lead to a career in economics studying inequality among marginalized and privileged groups.
Davis didn’t set out to be an economist. Her initial focus was mathematics—not theoretical math, she’s quick to point out, but problem solving. Her family recognized her talent with numbers and steered her toward a career as an actuary. “That’s how I got introduced to economics,” she says, “on that actuarial path.”
Davis earned bachelor’s degrees in applied mathematics and economics from North Carolina A&T State University. After that, she worked for two years at JPMorgan Chase as part of a rotational development program, and then for four years as a big data analyst in New York City.
“During my years as an undergrad and then during my gap years before grad school,” she says, “I really saw how economics fit with how I thought about the world. Well—” She stops and corrects herself: “It doesn't really fit with how I think about the world, but the tools match with how I think about solving problems. It seemed to be the best place to merge my interests and goals.”
Researching school discipline gaps
Dr. Davis emphasizes that she really wants to make a difference. “I know it's a little cliche, but that's the main reason I wanted to get my Ph.D.” She knew she wanted to work on specific types of questions that were important to her, but to get the autonomy to choose those research projects, she says, “you need some letters behind your name.”
Davis earned those letters from the Applied Economics Graduate Program at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis–St. Paul. It was there that she began studying the effects of school resource officer (SRO) requirements on racial discipline gaps. Her research shows that requiring SROs to have sworn law-enforcement credentials makes racial discipline gaps much worse in majority Black schools. After the training requirements go into effect, Black students face far more suspensions and police referrals than white students—often for the same kinds of behavior. Training programs for SROs don’t fix these disparities, which suggests the issue isn’t solely individual officers but the broader systems in which they work.
Davis is passionate about addressing these broader systems. Her research revealed that the policies are almost always focused on how to change the individual behavior of the officer or the student. They rarely acknowledge the fundamental problems with schools, particularly majority-Black schools—that they are often underfunded and underresourced, especially as it relates to mental and behavioral health.
“I’m not saying it’s an either or, but it’s not sufficient to ignore the underlying structural issues,” says Davis. Her work shows the need for a complementary set of policies that address the structural barriers, these gaps, and not focus solely on individual-based interventions. “Those types of interventions are helpful but they're insufficient—that’s what I and a host of other researchers and economists are finding [in our group inequality research]. It is important that policymakers identify the contribution of these structural factors. Whether it's racism or misogyny—all these things that are hard to measure but are in fact present—we might actually make some progress as far as narrowing the racial and gender gaps.”
What’s next
In addition to finishing her grad school research, Dr. Davis is looking into the types of structural barriers that cause the inequalities between Black and white communities, and between men and women. But she’s looking at it within the field of stratification economics, which incorporates how identity and power structures shape the economies individuals face. She’s aiming to “build a theoretical framework to not only identify the causes and consequences, but also answer, ‘What can we do about this?’ It's going to be a long arc,” she says, “but that's what I'm hoping to do.”
Why Upjohn?
Dr. Davis appreciates that the Upjohn Institute values her specific research interests, and she sees her landing here as an indicator that staff are open to other disciplines, explanations, and lessons. Although most are “not in the stratification economics world,” Davis feels supported and is eager to take on impact-oriented work.
“If you want to do rigorous research but also do work that impacts community and places you care about, Upjohn is the right place,” she says. “This is a really good place to do it.”