Janet Yellen facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Janet Yellen
Official portrait, 2021
78th United States Secretary of the Treasury
In office January 26, 2021 – January 20, 2025
President	Joe Biden
Deputy	Wally Adeyemo
Preceded by	Steven Mnuchin
Succeeded by	Scott Bessent
15th Chair of the Federal Reserve
In office February 3, 2014 – February 3, 2018
President	Barack Obama Donald Trump
Deputy	Stanley Fischer
Preceded by	Ben Bernanke
Succeeded by	Jerome Powell
19th Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve
In office October 4, 2010 – February 3, 2014
President	Barack Obama
Preceded by	Donald Kohn
Succeeded by	Stanley Fischer
Member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors
In office October 4, 2010 – February 3, 2018
President	Barack Obama Donald Trump
Preceded by	Mark W. Olson
Succeeded by	Lisa D. Cook
In office August 12, 1994 – February 17, 1997
President	Bill Clinton
Preceded by	Wayne Angell
Succeeded by	Edward Gramlich
11th President of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
In office June 14, 2004 – October 4, 2010
Preceded by	Robert T. Parry
Succeeded by	John Williams
18th Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers
In office February 18, 1997 – August 3, 1999
President	Bill Clinton
Preceded by	Joseph Stiglitz
Succeeded by	Martin Neil Baily
Personal details
Born	Janet Louise Yellen (1946-08-13) August 13, 1946 (age 78) New York City, New York, U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	George Akerlof ​ (m. 1978)​
Children	1
Education	Brown University (BA) Yale University (MA, PhD)
Signature
Scientific career
Fields	Macroeconomics Labor economics New Keynesian economics
Institutions	Harvard University London School of Economics University of California, Berkeley National Bureau of Economic Research Brookings Institution
Thesis	Employment, Output and Capital Accumulation in an Open Economy: A Disequilibrium Approach (1971)
Doctoral advisor	James Tobin
Other academic advisors	Joseph Stiglitz
Doctoral students	Charles Engel
Academic career
Information at IDEAS / RePEc

Janet Louise Yellen (born August 13, 1946) is an American economist who served as the 78th United States secretary of the treasury from 2021 to 2025. She previously served as the 15th chair of the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2018. She was the first woman to hold either post. Yellen is the Eugene E. and Catherine M. Trefethen Professor of Business Administration and Economics at the University of California, Berkeley.

Early life and education

Yellen was born on August 13, 1946, to Anna Ruth (née Blumenthal; 1907–1986), a former elementary school teacher, and Julius Yellen (1906–1975), a family physician. Janet has an older brother, John (b. 1942), a program director for archaeology at the National Science Foundation.

In a speech at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Yellen told that her father's family immigrated to the United States from Sokołów Podlaski, a small town about 50 miles outside of Warsaw. She shared that nearly the entirety of its Jewish population, including many of her relatives, was deported or murdered during the Holocaust.

Yellen attended local Fort Hamilton High School, where she was an honor society member, and participated in the boosters club, the psychology club, and the history club. She also served as editor-in-chief of The Pilot, the school newspaper, which continued its 13-year streak as the first-place winner of the prestigious Columbia Scholastic Press Association contest under her leadership. She earned a National Merit commendation letter and was admitted to a selective science honors program at Columbia University to voluntarily study mathematics on Saturday mornings. Yellen was one of 30 students to win state Regents scholarships for college, and one of a select few to win the mayor’s citation for scholarship. She graduated in 1963 as valedictorian of her class. In line with school tradition, for the editor to interview the valedictorian, she conducted an interview with herself in the third person.

Yellen enrolled at Pembroke College in Brown University, initially intending to study philosophy. However, during her freshman year, she switched her planned major to economics and was particularly influenced by professors George Herbert Borts and Herschel Grossman. As a freshman at college, she also joined the business staff of The Brown Daily Herald, but soon afterward left the paper to focus on her academic studies. Yellen graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor's in economics from Brown University in 1967, and earned her master's and PhD in economics from Yale University in 1971. Her dissertation was titled Employment, Output and Capital Accumulation in an Open Economy: A Disequilibrium Approach under the supervision of James Tobin, a noted economist who would later receive the Nobel Memorial Prize. As a teaching assistant, Yellen was so meticulous in taking notes during Tobin's macroeconomics class that they ended up as the unofficial textbook, circulated among generations of graduate students, and known as the "Yellen Notes." Her former professor Joseph Stiglitz, another Nobel Prize in Economics laureate, has called her one of his brightest and most memorable students. She later described Yale professors Tobin and William Brainard as "lifelong mentors," who provided the main intellectual foundation for her views on the economy. Yellen was the only woman among the two dozen economists who earned their doctorates from Yale in 1971.

Academic career

After receiving her Ph.D., Yellen obtained the position of assistant professor of economics at Harvard University, where she taught from 1971 to 1976. At that time, she was one of only two female faculty members in Harvard's economics department; the other woman was Rachel McCulloch. The pair struck up a close friendship and went on to write several academic papers together. In 1977, Yellen took a job within the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors after failing to win tenure at Harvard; she was recruited as a staff economist for the Board of Governors by Edwin M. Truman, who had known her from Yale. Truman was a junior professor when he heard Yellen's oral exam and was then about to take over the Fed's Division of International Finance. She was assigned to research international monetary reform.

While at the Fed, she met her husband, economist George Akerlof, in the bank's cafeteria; they married in 1978, less than a year later. By the time of their marriage, Akerlof had already accepted a teaching position at the London School of Economics (LSE). Yellen left her post at the Fed to accompany him and was given a tenure-track lectureship by LSE. The couple stayed in the United Kingdom for two years before returning to the United States, in part due to identity issues because they felt American, not English.

In 1980, Yellen joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, where she taught at the Haas School of Business to conduct macroeconomics research and teach undergraduate and MBA students for more than two decades. She earned the Haas School's outstanding teaching award twice, in 1985 and 1988. Yellen became just the second woman at Berkeley-Haas to earn tenure in 1982, as well as the title of full professor in 1985. She was named the Bernard T. Rocca, Jr. Professor of International Business and Trade in 1992.

From 1994 to 1999, Yellen took a leave of absence from Berkeley to go into public service. After returning to academia, she resumed her teaching assignment at Haas and received a joint appointment with Berkeley's Department of Economics. She was appointed the Eugene E. and Catherine M. Trefethen Professor of Business Administration and Professor of Economics in 1999 and remained an active faculty member until she was appointed president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco in 2004. Yellen was awarded the title of Professor Emeritus at UC Berkeley in 2006.

Throughout her career, Yellen served as an adviser to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Brookings Panel on Economic Activity, and the National Science Foundation's Panel in Economics. She was also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research from 1999 to 2010.

Career

Official portrait as CEA Chair, circa 1997

Yellen takes the oath of office administered by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in the Eccles Building, October 4, 2010

Official portrait as Federal Reserve Chair, 2015

From left to right: Janet Yellen, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, and Paul Volcker, May 1, 2014.

Yellen in conversation with IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde, July 2, 2014

Yellen delivers her farewell speech to Federal Reserve staff, February 1, 2018

Yellen served as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors from 1994 to 1997 and was nominated to the position by President Bill Clinton, who then named her chair of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1997 to 1999. She subsequently returned to academia, before serving as president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco from 2004 until 2010. Afterward, President Barack Obama chose her to replace Donald Kohn as vice chair of the Federal Reserve from 2010 to 2014 before nominating her to succeed Ben Bernanke as chair of the Federal Reserve three years later. She was succeeded by Jerome Powell after President Donald Trump declined to renominate her for a second term. Following her departure from the Federal Reserve, Yellen joined the Brookings Institution as a distinguished fellow in residence from 2018 until 2020, when she again went into public service.

On November 30, 2020, President-elect Joe Biden nominated Yellen to serve as secretary of the treasury; she was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on January 25, 2021, and took office the next day.

Secretary of the Treasury (2021–2025)

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris receive an economic briefing from Treasury Secretary Yellen in the Oval Office, January 29, 2021

Yellen meeting with German finance minister Olaf Scholz, July 2, 2021

A close-up of a United States five-dollar bill featuring Yellen's signature.

In April 2021, Yellen proposed a global minimum corporate tax rate that would prevent profit shifting by multinational companies for tax avoidance. The next month, financial leaders from the G20 countries came to an agreement on plans to put an end to global tax havens, force multinational corporations to pay an appropriate share of tax wherever they operate, and create a "more stable and fair international tax architecture."

In October 2021, more than 130 countries, accounting for more than 90% of global GDP, including several low-tax jurisdictions that had previously fought the pact, enforced through the OECD a landmark agreement to establish a global minimum tax rate of 15% for businesses worldwide. The projected gain from the deal, which was anticipated to take effect in 2023, may result in an increase of $150 billion in annual tax revenues. It is worth noting, however, that the treaty's implementation path remains uncertain because its ratification requires a two-thirds majority in the evenly divided U.S. Senate as well as passing domestic legislation in each of the signed countries.

Debt ceiling crisis

On July 23, 2021, Yellen sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other congressional leaders in which she urged lawmakers to increase or suspend the nation's debt limit as soon as possible before it hit its statutory limit in August and the government would be unable to pay its bills. She warned Congress that failing to meet those financial obligations would cause "irreparable harm" to the U.S. economy and that the Treasury Department would take "extraordinary measures" to prevent the United States from suffering a government shutdown or even a debt default.

Yellen with Chinese Finance Minister Lan Fo'an in Beijing, 7 April 2024

In December 2021, President Biden signed a debt ceiling increase into law, preventing a U.S. default, a day after the Treasury's previously estimated deadline to address the issue. Congressional legislation designated to cover the government's financial commitments beyond the 2022 midterm elections was passed in a nearly party-line vote.

In January 2023, after Republicans took control over the House, Yellen informed House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and new congressional leadership that the U.S. expected to hit the debt ceiling on January 19 and that the Treasury yet again would be forced to use "extraordinary measures" to prevent default, and it could last until June of that year. She repeated her call to "act in a timely manner to increase or suspend the debt limit." Yellen rejected the GOP plan on government payments prioritization once "extraordinary measures" are exhausted, insisting that her department doesn't have the systems to do so and that proposal effectively means a default.

Yellen with King Abdullah II of Jordan, July 20, 2021

On June 3, 2023, President Biden signed into law bipartisan congressional legislation that suspended the public debt limit throughout his first term in office, therefore ending the ongoing debt-ceiling crisis. It came as a compromise on fiscal spending between the White House and House Republicans two days before the United States was estimated to reach the debt ceiling and subsequently could no longer meet its own financial obligations.

Digital Assets Regulation

On April 7, 2022, at American University's Kogod School of Business Center for Innovation, Yellen addressed for the first time the growing impact of digital assets on the American economy. Yellen outlined policy objectives and lessons that apply to the navigation of emerging technologies, which include "first, the U.S. financial system benefits from responsible innovation; second, it's often society's vulnerable who suffer most in an economic crisis when regulation is not moving at the same pace as innovation; third, regulation should focus on activities and risk, not technology; fourth, sovereign money is the core of a functioning financial system; and fifth, it'll take thoughtful public and private dialogue between various groups to move forward."

Yellen with South African Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana in November 2022

Yellen also announced possible plans for a government version of a stablecoin; the administration is studying the possibility of issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) or digital dollar while taking into consideration the impact of a CBDC on monetary policy, national security, and international trade, as well as its utility for consumers. Solving such problems is an "engineering challenge that would require years of development, not months," she said.

Yellen with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, February 27, 2023

Yellen laying flowers in memory of fallen Ukrainian soldiers at the Saint Michael's Square, February 27, 2023

Economic approach to China

Yellen with US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Filoli Estate in Woodside, California, November 15, 2023

Yellen meet Premier Li Qiang

In a speech delivered at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies on April 20, 2023, Yellen laid out three principal objectives of the Biden administration's economic approach toward China. Those principles are: first, the paramount importance of securing American national security interests as well as protecting human rights; second, seeking healthy and fair economic competition with China based on international rules; and third, aiming to engage on major global challenges like easing the debt burden of the developing world and climate change. Though she emphasized that national security would always take priority if it collided with economics, her address ought to be interpreted as an olive branch to Beijing instead of the confrontation that has for a long time prevailed in relations between the two nations. Yellen's speech attempted to revive dialogue, at least on economic matters, as she made clear her desire to visit China as soon as possible to get the countries' previously pragmatic approach to each other back on track.

Between July 6–9, Yellen visited China, the first trip to the country by a U.S. Treasury secretary in four years and her first since taking office. She began her visit by holding informal talks with the country's former vice premier Liu He, and People’s Bank of China (PBC) governor Yi Gang about the state of their domestic economies, as well as the global outlook, in a bid to reopen communication lines and find areas of common economic ground between the two nations. Yellen then met with China's newly appointed economic team, including Premier Li Qiang, Vice Premier He Lifeng, finance minister Liu Kun, and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) central bank chief Pan Gongsheng. During those bilateral meetings, she reaffirmed that the US national security restrictions on Chinese investment were intended to be narrowly focused and not have broad effects on the country's economy. Yellen also expressed concerns about Chinese economic policies and went on to criticize the country's authorities for their treatment of foreign, particularly American, companies; she stated, "We seek healthy economic competition that is not winner-take-all but that, with a fair set of rules, can benefit both countries over time."

Overall, Yellen's visit was part of a broader push by the Biden administration to rebuild bridges between the two countries and open more lines of high-level communication with America’s main geopolitical rival, in particular with China's new economic leaders. In a press conference capping her four-day trip to Beijing, Yellen described it as a mission to revive engagement between the two largest economies and said she believes it has brought US-China ties closer to a "surer footing."

Honors and awards

Yellen has received numerous honors in recognition of her career in academia and politics. These include:

Academic

Memberships and fellowships

Awards

Other recognition

• In March 2018, Charles D. Ellis endowed The Janet L. Yellen Chair at the Yale School of Management, which was named after her. Professor Andrew Metrick has been invested as the inaugural Janet L. Yellen Professor of Finance and Management at the School.
• In December 2018, Federal Reserve Board presented an annual Janet L. Yellen Award for Excellence in Community Development to recognize the exemplary work of Federal Reserve System staff, intended to honor former chair Yellen's commitment to public service. Ariel Cisneros of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City has been named the first recipient of the newly created award.
• Yellen has been named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine four times. This occurred in the years 2014, 2015, 2017, and 2023. Additionally, she was named a runner-up for Time Person of the Year in 2022.
• Yellen has been ranked on multiple occasions in Forbes magazine's list of the world's 100 most powerful women. She was named the second-most powerful woman in the world in 2014. Forbes also ranked her several times on its list of the world's most powerful people. She was named the sixth-most powerful person in the world in 2014 and 2016.

Personal life

Yellen is married to George Akerlof, an economist who is a university professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University and Koshland Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as a 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences laureate. The couple met in the fall of 1977, became engaged by that December, and married in June 1978, less than a year after meeting. Their son, Robert Akerlof (born 1981), is a fellow economist. He received a bachelor's summa cum laude in economics and mathematics from Yale University and earned his PhD in economics from Harvard University, where he was a Presidential Scholar. Robert is an associate professor of economics at the University of Warwick.

Yellen and George Akerlof have often collaborated on research, including topics such as poverty, unemployment and a paper on the costs of out-of-wedlock childbearing. One of their most discussed papers at Berkeley, on why lower wages sometimes lead to lower employment, came from the personal experience of hiring a nanny for the first time. Yellen says Akerlof has been her biggest intellectual influence. Both frequently state that their lone disagreement is that she is a bit more supportive of free trade than he is.

Yellen has an estimated net worth of $20 million, accrued from stock holdings, speaking engagements, and various government and academic positions. Upon taking office as U.S. Treasury Secretary, she divested her shares including those in Pfizer, ConocoPhillips, and AT&T, among others.

Yellen inherited from her mother a collection of postage stamps worth between $15,000 and $50,000. She doesn't collect them on her own.

See also

In Spanish: Janet Yellen para niños

• List of female United States Cabinet members
• List of people who have held multiple United States Cabinet-level positions