Martha J. Bailey is a Professor of Economics at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is also a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a member of the executive committee of the American Economic Association. She was previously a Professor of Economics at the University of Michigan from 2007 to 2020, where she was the first woman internally promoted to tenure in that department. In November 2017, Bloomberg Businessweek named her someone to watch in 2018, because "Her research on the positive economic effects of contraception has influenced debates around health care and pay equity."