Stephen P. Jenkins

Stephen P. Jenkins is a professor of economic and social policy, having joined the Department of Social Policy in January 2011. He was head of the department for the academic years 2016-17 and 2018-19. Jenkins enjoys teaching courses at both the undergraduate and master’s levels; he convenes a full-year master’s-level course on welfare analysis and measurement.

Jenkins is a quantitative generalist with most of his research about income inequality and poverty, and also mobility. His work addresses topics such as the rise in top incomes and their contribution to recent increases in inequality, how to measure poverty persistence, and how to assess which factors trigger exits from a poverty spell. He also researches related topics such as labour market participation and the tax and benefit system. He has interests in quantitative research methods including statistical graphics and the use of survey and administrative record data. He welcomes enquiries from potential Ph.D. students to work on topics in his areas of interest.

His research has been published in a wide range of journals including: Economic Journal, Economica, European Sociological Review, Journal of Applied Econometrics, Journal of Economic Inequality, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Journal of Social Policy, Labour Economics, Oxford Economic Papers, Review of Economics and Statistics, and Review of Income and Wealth. He has also published several books including Changing Fortunes: Income Mobility and Poverty Dynamics in Britain (Oxford University Press, 2011) and The Great Recession and the Distribution of Household Income (co-edited with Brandolini, Micklewright and Nolan; Oxford University Press, 2013). He has written reports for organizations such as the UK Department for Work and Pensions, the OECD, and New Zealand Treasury. Jenkins was editor-in-chief of the Journal of Economic Inequality (2014–2017). He was president of the International Association for Research on Income and Wealth (2006–2008) and of the European Society for Population Economics (1998). Jenkins was named as a distinguished fellow of the New Zealand Association of Economists in July 2019. He has been elected president-elect of the Society for the Study of Economic Inequality (ECINEQ) for 2019-21 and president for 2021-23, succeeding Thomas Piketty. He is a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labour (IZA), Bonn.