Marianne Bitler received her B.S. in Mathematics from the Pennsylvania State University in 1991 and her Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1998. Currently, she is a professor of economics at the University of California, Davis and a Research Associate in the NBER's Children's and Health Economics Programs. Previously she has worked at UC-Irvine, the Public Policy Institute of California, the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica and on the Survey of Small Business Finances at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve in Washington, DC.

Her research interests include the effects of safety net and other government programs on health and well-being, economic demography. program evaluation, and economics of education.

She joined IZA as a Research Fellow in January 2003.