Daly went on to earn a high school equivalency diploma (GED). She received a bachelor's degree from the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 1985 and a master's degree from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1987. She went on to earn a Ph.D in economics from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University in 1994. She also completed a post-doctoral fellowship at National Institute of Aging at Northwestern University in 1996.