Scope and Content Note
The papers of Alice M. Rivlin (1931-2019) span the years 1963-2007. The papers document Rivlin's career as an economist, her lengthy association with the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., her years at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare between 1966 and 1969, her directorship of the Congressional Budget Office between 1975 and 1983 and the Office of Management and Budget between 1993 and 1996, her term at the Federal Reserve between 1996 and 1999, and her activities as a professor at various graduate schools between 2003-2007. The papers do not document, however, her presidency of the American Economic Association in 1986. The papers are organized into nine series over two parts. Part I includes the Correspondence, Subject Files, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Writings, and Miscellany series, and Part II includes additional Correspondence, a Chronological File,Subject Files, Publications and Writings, Printed Matter, a Clippings File, and a Personal File series.
Part I
While at the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Rivlin helped introduce cost-benefit analyses of the department's operations in response to the Johnson administration's growing interest in Planning, Programming and Budget Systems (PPBS). The Department of Health, Education and Welfare series contains correspondence, memoranda, reports, and printed matter pertaining to PPBS applications for evaluating the department's programs. Correspondence, memoranda, and reports in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare series contain useful information on social unrest in the late 1960s. Letters from scholars, including Daniel Bell, John Hope Franklin, Charles E. Fritz, Herbert J. Gans, Neil J. Smelser, and James Wilfred Vander Zanden, analyze social factors that led to race riots in the summer of 1967. The HEW series also contains memoranda detailing staff reactions to recommendations on education issued by the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorder (Kerner Commission). Finally, memoranda and reports discuss meetings between HEW officials and representatives of the Poor People's Campaign march on Washington in 1968. Rivlin left HEW in March 1969, shortly after Richard Nixon assumed the presidency. Included in the HEW files is a series of memoranda regarding the transition between the Johnson and Nixon administrations.
Rivlin returned to the Brookings Institution where she was a senior fellow in the Economic Studies Program until 1975, when Congress named her the first director of the newly established Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Correspondence, memoranda, travel records, and newspaper clippings concerning Rivlin’s position as the CBO's first director are found in the Correspondence, Subject File, and Miscellany series. Speeches, congressional testimony, articles, and interviews in the Writings series provide insight into contemporary budget and economic issues, as well as CBO operations under Rivlin's directorship.
In 1983, after leaving the CBO, Rivlin became director of the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution, and her correspondence and subject files document the activities of this "think tank" and research institution during the 1970s and 1980s.
Subject Files also contain material pertaining to Rivlin's participation on the boards of various organizations and academic institutions. In 1978, Rivlin traveled to China as a member of the Carnegie Council on Policy Studies in Higher Education's study group on the relation between education and work. Her papers include correspondence about the trip as well as a notebook in which she recorded her impressions of sites visited. Material relating to social policy and research includes files from the Ford Foundation's Project on Social Welfare and the American Future (1984), National Research Council's Committee on Federal Agency Evaluation Research (1975), the National Conference on Social Welfare's Committee on Federalism and National Purpose (1984-1985), and the Brookings Panel on Social Experimentation (1972-1975). An "issues book" compiled for presidential candidate Edmund S. Muskie by Rivlin between 1970 and 1972 is of political interest.
The Writings series contains speeches, articles, editorials, congressional testimony, interviews, and reviews on such subjects as the federal budget, economy, education, health, welfare reform, social experimentation, aging, income maintenance, and planning, programming, and budget systems.
The papers include correspondence from fellow economists, Brookings Institution colleagues, members of Congress, state governors, and federal officials. Included is correspondence from Gardner Ackley, John Brademas, John Kenneth Galbraith, Kermit Gordon, William Gorham, Walter W. Heller, Clark Kerr, Bruce King, Daniel P. Moynihan, Edmund S. Muskie, Joseph A. Pechman, William Proxmire, Charles S. Robb, Charles L. Schultze, Elmer B. Staats, Paul A. Volcker, and Timothy E. Wirth.
Part II
The Correspondence series predominantly documents Rivlin’s association with the Brookings Institution and includes some correspondence from her tenure on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. It contains letters sent and received, memoranda, and miscellaneous attachments. There are also subgroups of invitational correspondence concerning Rivlin's attendance at public functions and congratulatory messages concerning Rivlin's appointment as director of the Congressional Budget Office.
The Chronological File comprises materials in folders originally received with the label "Chronological File" and contains correspondence, meoranda, minutes, reports, printed material, and newspaper clippings pertaining to Rivlin's membership on various boards, panels, and organizations. A subgroup of files pertaining to Rivlin's various tenures at The Brookings Institution is also found in this series.
The Subject Files contain correspondence, memoranda, minutes, reports, printed material, and newspaper clippings pertaining to Rivlin's membership on various boards, panels and organizations, travels as director of the Office of Management and Budget and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and her involvement with different projects, initiatives, and events associated with her work at the Brookings Institution. Many subject files include notes, talking points, or drafts of remarks presented at different events, and related materials for Rivlin’s appearances at academic institutions or professional organizations can be found in the Publications and Writings series. Subject files from 1999 onward reflect Rivlin’s growing involvement in research regarding the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and coincide with her tenure as the director of the Brookings-Greater Washington Research Program from 2001-2009.
The Publications and Writings series contains speeches, notes, congressional testimony, interviews, articles, reviews, project proposals, newspaper articles, reports and studies authored by Rivlin, and materials featuring Rivlin and her work. While early publications reflect Rivlin’s work at HEW, the bulk of the materials in this series is related to her work at the Brookings Institution and appearances at various events, academic lectures, and conferences. Materials in the notes subgroup largely capture Rivlin’s work at the Office of Management and Budget from 1993 to 1996. Also collected in this series is a group of newspaper editorials for The Washington Post authored by Rivlin between 1969 and 1973 on various topics in contemporary American economics, as well as a group of features and mentions of Rivlin in miscellaneous publications, often involving lengthy interviews or discussions of Rivlin’s work and opinions.
The Printed Matter series is comprised of published writings and articles, unpublished drafts, and other printed materials not authored by Rivlin. While some materials may contain annotations by Rivlin, most do not. Subjects covered by the materials include the federal budget and its deficit and financial management, education, energy taxes, federalism, healthcare and long term care, poverty, social security, state fiscal policy, general tax policy, and welfare. Also included in this series is a digital file of a report compiled by an unknown author surveying Rivlin’s writings and summarizing her views and opinions on many of the topics in this series.
The Clippings File contains newspaper and magazine clippings featuring or mentioning Rivlin. Many clippings were originally collected via professional press clipping agencies.
The Personal File includes personal and biographical material, portrait photographs and candid images taken at professional events, employment records and curriculum vitae, and personal travel and vacation itineraries.