Richard V. Reeves

Senior Fellow in Economic Studies, Brookings Institute

Richard V. Reeves is a senior fellow in Economic Studies, policy director of the Center on Children and Families, and editor-in-chief of the Social Mobility Memos blog. His research focuses on social mobility, inequality, and family change. Prior to joining Brookings, he was director of strategy to the UK’s Deputy Prime Minister.

Richard’s publications for Brookings include Saving Horatio Alger: Equality, Opportunity, and the American Dream (2014), Character and Opportunity (2014), The Glass Floor (2013), and The Parenting Gap (2014). He is also a contributor to The Atlantic, National Affairs, Democracy Journal, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Richard is the author of John Stuart Mill – Victorian Firebrand, an intellectual biography of the British liberal philosopher and politician.

His previous roles include director of Demos, the London-based political think-tank; director of futures at the Work Foundation; principal policy advisor to the Minister for Welfare Reform, research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research, and researcher at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London. He is also a former European Business Speaker of the Year.

Richard earned a BA from Oxford University and a PhD from Warwick University. With co-author Isabel V. Sawhill, he was recipient of the “Best Policy Paper” 2014 ranking in the University of Pennsylvania’s annual Think Tank Awards.