Ida Craven Merriam

Ida Craven Merriam (1904–1997) was an American economist and statistician who became "one of the seminal figures in the early administration of the Social Security program", helping to found the nonprofit National Academy of Social Insurance.

Ida Craven, a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was born on November 6, 1904. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa in English and history from Wellesley College in 1925, She studied economics at the University of Chicago, and then earned a Ph.D. in 1928 from the Brookings Graduate School of Economics and Government in Washington, D.C. After completing her studies, she worked for the Encyclopedia of Social Sciences and as an assistant professor at the Connecticut College for Women, and married Mylon Merriam in 1933. soon after the creation of the SSA in 1935, As Assistant Commissioner, she published special reports on topics including housing, benefit levels, health insurance, disability, widows, work-life balance, prospects for future retirees, and related social welfare systems in Europe. Her unit also set the first poverty thresholds for the US. She retired in 1972. The United States Civil Service Commission gave Merriam a Federal Woman's Award in 1966, and she also won the Distinguished Service Award of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

Death Ida Craven Merriam died on April 8, 1997, in Cheverly, Maryland, near the Collington Episcopal Life Care Center in Mitchellville, Maryland, where she had been an inpatient for three years before her death.