Barbara Wolfe teaches health economics and other public economics courses. Professor Wolfe is co-author of Succeeding Generations: On the Effects of Investments in Children (with Robert Haveman) and editor of two books: The Relevance of Public Finance for Policy Making; and On the Role of Budgetary Policy During Demographic Changes. she recently organized a group porject that resulted in an edited volume, Biological Consequences of SocioEconomic Inequalities. She has published extensively in professional journals. She has been a Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, a Research Associate for the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation. She is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine. She currently holds a visiting position at the Melbourne Institute at the University of Melbourne. She is a past director of the Institute for Research on Poverty.

She joined IZA as a Research Fellow in May 2003.