Robert Jensen is Professor of Public Policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. He is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and a fellow of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD). He received his Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University and prior to joining UCLA was a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
His research focuses on the microeconomics of international poverty and economic development, including topics such as gender, health, education, fertility, and the role of markets and private enterprise in promoting economic development. He has conducted and/or currently has ongoing survey projects in China, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Nepal and India. He has also served as an adviser to the International Labor Organization and the World Bank on a variety of topics including strategies to eradicate child labor and the design of social welfare programs. He is Co-Editor of the Journal of Development Economics and an Associate Editor of Economic Development and Cultural Change and the Quarterly Journal of Economics.