Valerie Lacarte

Valerie Lacarte is a Senior Policy Analyst with MPI’s U.S. Immigration Policy Program, where she contributes to research design and conducts data analysis on a range of issues, including native-immigrant gaps in socioeconomic outcomes and access to public benefits for vulnerable immigrant and humanitarian populations.

Prior to joining MPI, Dr. Lacarte was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research where she conducted empirical analysis on women’s economic security, including the gender wage gap, paid family leave, entrepreneurship, and public-health expenditures. Previously, she worked at the Organization of American States and the Inter-American Development Bank, where she gained expertise on regional integration, with a focus on the Caribbean.

Dr. Lacarte earned a BA in economics from Université du Québec à Montréal, an MSc in economics from Université de Montréal, and a PhD in economics from American University. For her dissertation, she used a mixed-methods approach to study the integration of Caribbean immigrants into the U.S. labor market and the intersectionality of race, ethnicity, and cultural gender norms.