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:

  1. 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. 
  2. 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.

  3. Assessing the economy

    Over the past few days and weeks, there has been lots of rather histrionic commentary about the UK’s economic situation as if the budget has created an economic disaster from which we’ll never recover.