Jane Waldfogel is the Compton Foundation Centennial Professor at Columbia University School of Social Work and a visiting professor at the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics. She has written extensively on the impact of public policies on child and family well-being. Her books include Britain's War on Poverty (2010), Steady Gains and Stalled Progress: Inequality and the Black-White Test Score Gap (2008), What Children Need (2006), Securing the Future: Investing in Children from Birth to College (2000), and The Future of Child Protection: How to Break the Cycle of Abuse and Neglect (1998). She is also the author of more than 100 articles in leading academic journals. Her current research includes studies of work-family policies, fragile families and child well-being, improving the measurement of poverty, income-related gaps in school readiness, and inequality in child outcomes in the US, UK, Australia, and Canada.

Waldfogel received a B.A. magna cum laude in Psychology and Social Relations from Radcliffe College in 1976, a M.Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1979, and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 1994.