Lorraine Dearden is Professor of Economics and Social Statistics in the Social Research Institute at University College London and a Research Fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Her work involves using data and advanced quantitative techniques to understand, evaluate and inform economic and public policy making.

She has a wide range of policy interests including higher education access and financing; evaluation methods; returns to education; evaluating school and university effectiveness; intergenerational education and income mobility; understanding the causes and consequences of child adversity and vulnerability; evaluating policies that try to help improve child and adult outcomes; the impact of education and training on company performance; ethnic inequality in childhood and adult outcomes; and wage determination and the labour market. She has published widely on all these issues in high quality economics and epidemiology journals.

She joined IZA as a Research Fellow in December 2008.