Hello! My name is Lexin Cai (pronounced Lex-in KAI), a PhD candidate in Economics at Cornell University. I am a labor and public economist studying the effects of school meals and SNAP using large-scale administrative data. My dissertation research is funded by the Russell Sage Foundation, Policy Impacts at MIT, and the Cornell Department of Economics.

Prior to graduate school, I worked for five years at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a DC-based policy research organization focusing on policies affecting low-income families.

I will join the California Center for Population Research at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) as a postdoctoral scholar in September 2026.