Professor Ashwin Kumar

Director of research and policy

Ashwin leads IPPR's research and policy teams, and is also professor of social policy at Manchester Metropolitan University.

His area of expertise focuses on analysis and modelling of incomes, poverty and the labour market.

He has previously worked as the Chief Economist at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a Senior Economic Adviser at the Department for Work and Pensions, rail director of the consumer watchdog Passenger Focus, and as an economic adviser to Gordon Brown, supporting him in his post-prime-ministerial work for the World Economic Forum.

He has also served as a non-executive director of a number of the National Housing Federation and the homelessness charity St Mungo’s. He is the author of Idleness, a study of low pay in Britain.

More from this author:

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  1. Analysis of industry claims about the effects of higher gambling taxes

    Our response to the backlash from the gambling industry on calls for higher taxes.
  2. An unrecognisable woman playing a slot machine in a social club

    Reforming gambling taxation: How to lift half a million children out of poverty

    A key priority for the government’s upcoming child poverty strategy should be to remove the two-child limit and scrap the household benefit cap.

  3. Professor Ashwin Kumar on BBC Politics

  4. A mother comforts her sone while looking out of a window

    Getting the child poverty strategy we need: A co-produced agenda for change

    The UK government has a time-limited opportunity to make a decisive difference to child poverty in its upcoming strategy. 

  5. IPPR research on the impact of the two-child benefit limit on Channel 4 News

  6. A young boy and girl entering the front door of a house, smiling. Their father carries a baby behind them

    The homes that children deserve: Housing policy to support families

    As the government seeks to develop a new child poverty strategy, it will need to grapple with housing – the single largest cost faced by families.