Kathleen Beegle is a Lead Economist in the Poverty, Inequality and Human Development Team of the World Bank's Development Research Group. Her research experience includes the study of poverty, labor, economic shocks, and methodological studies on household survey data collection in developing countries. She has expertise in the design and implementation of household surveys and their use for poverty and policy analysis. She has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed academic journals and co-lead several World Bank reports including the World Development Report 2013 on Jobs.

She was previously in the Research Group from 2001-2013. In the interim, she was the Lead Economist with the Gender Group (2018-2021), the Human Development Program Leader for Ghana, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, based in Accra, Ghana (2014-2018), and a Lead Economist in the Africa Chief Economist Office (2013-2014). She received her Ph.D. in Economics from Michigan State University and competed a post-doctoral fellowship at RAND.

She joined IZA as a Research Fellow in April 2008.