Skip to Main Content      LA FOLLETTE HOME UW Home UW Directory My UW

Robert M. La Follette
School of Public Affairs
1225 Observatory Drive
Madison, WI 53706

Telephone:  608.262.3581
Fax: 608.265.3233


Last updated:
September 12, 2011



UW Logo

© Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System


Barbara Wolfe. University of Wisconsin-Madison photo by Michael Forster Rothbart taken 2006.

Barbara Wolfe

Professor of Public Affairs, Economics and Population Health Sciences;

Faculty Affiliate, Institute for Research on Poverty

Office: 204 Observatory Hill Office Building
Phone: (608) 263-2029
Fax: (608) 265-3233
E-mail:

Department of Economics
University of Wisconsin - Madison
1180 Observatory Drive
Madison, WI 53726-1393

Barbara Wolfe is Professor of Economics, Population Health Sciences, and Public Affairs and Faculty Affiliate at the Institute for Research on Poverty. Her research focuses broadly on poverty and health issues. Current projects examine the role of income on health using a natural experiment; whether housing voucher programs lead to higher earnings, higher quality child care, and less reliance on other public assistance programs; the adequacy of resources when individuals retire and during their first decade of retirement; the increasing selectivity of high quality universities; how poverty influences critical brain areas among young children and the influence of growing up with a sibling who has a developmental disability or mental illness on outcomes as a young adult. Recent work addresses the effects of welfare reform; economics of disability; ties among income, wealth, and health; racial disparities in health; and intergenerational determinants of success in young adults. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine,  is serving on its standing committee on Family Planning, recently served on a committee addressing improving access to oral health care, and served as vice-chair of the National Academy of Sciences/Institute of Medicine Board on Children, Youth and Families and as a member of the Advisory Committee to the Director of the National Institutes of Health. Professor Wolfe's recent articles have appeared in the Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Human Resources, International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Economy Inquiry, Journal of Health Economics, and Demography. She received her doctorate in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.

Curriculum vitae

Working papers and research

Department of Population Health Sciences information

Courses