Peter Whiteford

Prof Peter Whiteford is a Professor at the Australian National University (ANU) within the Crawford School of Public Policy, serving as Director of the Social Policy Institute and Fellow of the Tax and Transfer Policy Institute. He holds an adjunct role at the University of New South Wales. His expertise spans international social security policies, inequality, and redistribution, with a focus on pension systems, child poverty, and welfare state comparisons. He contributed to OECD policy work (2000–2008) and advised Australia’s Harmer Review and Henry Tax Review. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia (2018).

Education: BA (Hons) Queensland, Litt B (ANU), DPhil (York).

Research Interests: Child poverty, family policy, income inequality, welfare state comparisons, pension policies, social protection in China and Asia-Pacific, tax-transfer systems. His work emphasizes cross-national analyses of poverty and social security systems.

Article Trends: Recent work addresses pandemic impacts on health and work (e.g., lockdown effects), social protection design in developing countries, and critiques of welfare myths. Earlier research focused on OECD welfare reforms and Australia’s pension systems.

Awards: FASSA Fellowship (2018).

Advising & Grants: Led projects on housing insecurity (2019–2020), inequality in Australia (2022–2026), and comparative tax-welfare approaches with Korea. Collaborations include CEPAR (ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research).

Labs/Teams: Social Policy Institute, Tax and Transfer Policy Institute, ANU’s Policy & Governance Program.