Richard Reeves

Richard V. Reeves is a senior fellow in Economic Studies, where he holds the John C. and Nancy D. Whitehead Chair. Richard is the Director of the Future of the Middle Class Initiative and of the Center on Children and Families. His research focuses on the middle class, inequality and social mobility.

Richard’s publications for Brookings include his latest book Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do about It (2017). He is a contributor to The Atlantic, National Affairs, Democracy Journal, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Richard is also the author of John Stuart Mill – Victorian Firebrand, an intellectual biography of the British liberal philosopher and politician.

Richard sits on the Board of Jobs for the Future, and is an adviser to the American Family Survey, and to the Equity Center at the University of Virginia. He has previously served as a consultant to the Opportunity Insights team led by Prof Raj Chetty at Harvard University (2018), and as a member of the Government of Canada's Ministerial Advisory Committee on Poverty (2017-2018).

Richard’s 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; social affairs editor of the The Observer; research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research; economics correspondent for The Guardian; and a researcher at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London. He is also a former European Business Speaker of the Year.

Richard has a BA from Oxford University and a PhD from Warwick University.

Richard has received honoraria for speaking, consulting or writing from the Guardian Media Group and the Kern Family Foundation.

EDUCATION

• University of Warwick, PhD philosophy
• Wadham College, Oxford, BA (Hons) Geography