Jane Waldfogel

The author of six books, Dr. Waldfogel is a world authority on policies that affect the well-being of children and families, including paid parental leave, universal preschool, and factors that increase social mobility.

Jane Waldfogel is the Compton Foundation Centennial Professor for the Prevention of Children’s and Youth Problems, co-director of the Columbia Population Research Center, and a visiting professor at the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics.

She has written extensively on the impact public policies have on the well-being of children and families. Her most recent book, Too Many Children Left Behind: The U.S. Achievement Gap in Comparative Perspective (Russell Sage Foundation, 2015), assesses how social mobility varies in the United States compared with Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. She is the author of five other books, including most recently Britain’s War on Poverty (Russell Sage Foundation, 2010), Steady Gains and Stalled Progress: Inequality and the Black-White Test Score Gap (Russell Sage Foundation, 2008), and What Children Need (Harvard University Press, 2006). Waldfogel has served as president of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management and is a corresponding fellow of the British Academy and a fellow at the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

Waldfogel holds a BA in Psychology and Social Relations from Radcliffe College, an MEd from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a PhD in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.