Paul Johnson

Director

Paul has been director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies since 2011. He is a columnist for The Times, and is a regular contributor to other broadcast and print media. He is a visiting professor in the UCL Policy Lab and at the UCL department of economics.

He was for 10 years a member of the UK Climate Change Committee, and has served on the council of the ESRC and of the Royal Economic Society. Paul led reviews of pension auto-enrolment and of inflation measurement for the UK government, and of fiscal devolution for the Northern Ireland executive.

Previous roles have included time as chief economist at the Department for Education and as director of public spending at HM Treasury, where he also served as deputy head of the government economic service.

Paul published the Sunday Times bestseller “Follow the Money” in 2023.

He was appointed CBE in the 2018 birthday honours.

Education

MSc Economics, Birkbeck, University of London, 1992

BA (1st Class) Philosophy, Politics and Economics, University of Oxford, 1988

Contact

Email
Email
Twitter
@PJTheEconomist
Orcid number
0000-0003-3342-3504

Paul Johnson: all content

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Showing 141 – 160 of 856 results

Image of children working in a classroom

Educational inequalities

Event 16 August 2022 at 11:00
Education is one of the most important predictors of people's life chances, shaping outcomes like work and pay, health, and wealth. At this online event, our panel will look at what aspects of the education system make the most difference to inequality and what policymakers can do if they want to build a more equal education system.
Police officers

The future of public sector pensions

Podcast
We sit down with one of the architects behind the current public pensions system and discuss whether it is sustainable or needs further reform.

13 July 2022

London housing estate

Future of the welfare state

Presentation

This talk was given by Paul Johnson at Tony Blair Institute for Global Change's Future of Britain conference.

1 July 2022

An image of a child playing with a toy

Early childhood inequalities

Event 23 June 2022 at 11:00
Inequalities between children in these domains open up very early in life. At this online event we will discuss a number of questions. How large is the variation in early child development and in the environments that young children are raised in? What are the most important features of children’s early environment for their development?
Children playing

How can we fix the childcare system?

Podcast
With headlines about underfunding and staff shortages dominating the airwaves, we explore how to fix the childcare system and how to fund it.

16 June 2022

An image of adults at a lecture

Adult education: making it a genuine second chance

Event 13 June 2022 at 10:00
In the UK, the government has placed a high-emphasis on the role of technical and adult education in helping to level-up poorer areas of the country. This event will examine the potential role that adult education can play in providing a genuine second chance, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds or who leave school with few formal qualifications.