Tara Watson

Tara Watson is an economist focused on U.S. social policy, with interests in the safety net, health, and immigration. She is director of Brookings’ Center for Economic Security and Opportunity, a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and a co-editor of the Journal of Human Resources. In 2015-16, Watson served as deputy assistant secretary for microeconomic analysis in the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Economic Policy. She was previously a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of Michigan, a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and a research associate at the Princeton Center for Research on Child Wellbeing. Dr. Watson earned her Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 2003. Her 2021 book, ”The Border Within: The Economics of Immigration in an Age of Fear,” written with journalist Kalee Thompson, was published by University of Chicago Press.