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Dr Rajiv Prabhakar

Senior Lecturer In Personal Finance

Economics

rajiv.prabhakar@open.ac.uk

Biography

Professional biography

Rajiv Prabhakar is Senior Lecturer in Personal Finance at the Economics discipline. He teaches on modules on DB125 You and Your Money and is on the production team for the upcoming module D112 You and Your World. He is a Co-Editor of the Journal of Poverty and Social Justice. 

Rajiv has been, and is currently, a Parliamentary Academic Fellow at the UK Parliament. He has been based at the House of Commons Library (2021-2022) and the Parliamentary Office of Science and Techology's Knowledge Exchange Unit (2022-2024). He is attached in 2025 to the Members' and Members' Staff Services Team. In 2024, he was shortlisted for the Times Higher Education Knowledge Exchange Award for his work on the gender pension gap. 

Publications

Book

Financial Inclusion: critique and alternatives (2021)

The assets agenda: principles and policy (2008)

How to Defend Inheritance Tax (2008)

Book Chapter

What Lessons May Be Drawn from Media Reactions to a Universal Basic Income? (2022)

Personal Finance in Context (2018)

Does information about wealth inequality and inheritance tax raise public support for the wealth taxes? Evidence from a UK survey (2017)

Why do the public oppose inheritance taxes? (2015)

Does the financial crisis create opportunities for wealth taxation? (2012)

Debating the 'death tax': the politics of inheritance tax in the UK (2011)

What is the legacy of New Labour? (2011)

Reforming public services: the views of the main parties (2010)

Assets and citizenship (2008)

Digital Artefact

Sidecar Savings (2021)

Tax Strategy and Government Policy (2021)

Covid-19 and the Child Trust Fund (2020)

What do the reactions to Covid-19 show so far about financial inclusion? (2020)

Journal Article

Evaluating Parliamentary Academic Fellows (2025)

Editorial (2025)

Devolution and social citizenship: the case of the basic income pilot for care leavers in Wales (2024)

Are temporary or permanent income payments better placed to boost demand during Covid-19? (2022)

What are the barriers to taxing wealth? The case of a wealth tax proposal in the UK (2021)

Covid-19 and the Child Trust Fund (2020)

Universal basic income and Covid 19 (2020)

Should Basic Payment Accounts be Extended? (2019)

Financial Inclusion: A Tale of Two Literatures (2019)

Millennial Bugs. A review of the Resolution Foundation’s Intergenerational Commission Final Report (2018)

Are Basic Capital Versus Basic Income Debates Too Narrow? (2018)

A House Divided: Asset-Based Welfare and Housing Asset-Based Welfare (2018)

Why do people opt-out or not opt-out of automatic enrolment? A focus group study of automatic enrolment into a workplace pension in the United Kingdom (2017)

How did the Welsh government manage to reform council tax in 2005? (2016)

Does the financial crisis create opportunities for taxing wealth? A study of tax policy debates in the United Kingdom (2015)

What are public attitudes towards financial capability? Evidence from focus groups in London (2014)

Asset-based welfare: financialization or financial inclusion? (2013)

What do people think of taxation? Evidence from a focus group study in England (2012)

The Child Trust Fund in the UK: How might opening rates by parents be increased? (2010)

Developing financial capability among the young through education and asset-based welfare (2010)

Can public opposition to inheritance tax be weakened? (2009)

What is the future for asset-based welfare? (2009)

The assets agenda and social policy (2009)

Assets, inequality and the crisis (2009)

The development of asset-based welfare: the case of the Child Trust Fund in the UK (2009)

Wealth taxes: stories, metaphors and public attitudes (2008)

Other

The Gender Pension Gap (2022)

Asset-based welfare and child poverty: next steps for the Welsh Assembly (2010)

Report

Financial Inclusion (2022)

Increasing Taxes on Wealth. Lessons from the Welsh government reforms of Council Tax (2019)

Better but cheaper? Reforming the Child Trust Fund (2010)

Teen and tweeneconomics: a study into the teenage and tweenage pound in Britain: chapter 2 (2009)