Rucker C. Johnson

Rucker C. Johnson is an Associate Professor in the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. His graduate and postdoctoral training is in labor and health economics. Johnson was a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy from 2002 to 2004. His work considers the role of poverty and inequality in affecting life chances. He has focused on such topics as low-wage labor markets, spatial mismatch, the societal consequences of incarceration, the socioeconomic determinants of health disparities over the life course, and the effects of growing up poor and poor infant health on childhood cognition, child health, educational attainment, and later-life health and socioeconomic success. He received his Ph.D. in economics in 2002 from the University of Michigan and was the recipient of three national dissertation awards.

As a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Johnson shared expertise in thinking through next steps for the Healthy Communities initiative and presented his current research to Bank staff.