Rucker Johnson is the Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy in the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and faculty research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

As an applied microeconomist, his work considers the role of poverty and inequality in affecting life chances. He has focused on such topics as the long-run impacts of child neighborhood and school quality on socioeconomic success and later-life health; the determinants of intergenerational mobility; the societal consequences of incarceration; effects of maternal employment patterns on child well-being; the socioeconomic determinants of health disparities over the life course; and the effects of growing up poor and poor infant health on childhood cognition, educational attainment, adult health, and economic status.

Johnson received the 2017 Andrew Carnegie Fellowship. His research has appeared in leading academic journals, featured in mainstream media outlets, and he has been invited to give policy briefings at the White House and on Capitol Hill. He is the author of the book Children of the Dream: Why School Integration Works.

Johnson received a B.A. Magna Cum Laude in Economics from Morehouse College, and an M.A. and Ph.D., both in Economics, from the University of Michigan.