Stuart Butler is a senior fellow in Economic Studies at The Brookings Institution. Prior to joining Brookings, Butler spent 35 years at The Heritage Foundation as director of the Center for Policy Innovation and earlier as Vice President for Domestic and Economic Policy Studies. He is also a visiting fellow at the Convergence Center for Policy Resolution.
Butler is a member of the editorial board of Health Affairs and the board of Briya Public Charter School in the Washington, D.C.-area. He also serves on several advisory councils, including for the Peterson Center on Healthcare.
He served as a member of the Advisory Group for the Culture of Health Program and as member of the Board on Health Care Services of the National Academy of Medicine. He also served on the panel of health advisers for the Congressional Budget Office, and on the board of Mary’s Center, a community clinic system. For over 10 years he was an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy and in 2002 he was an Institute of Politics Fellow at Harvard University.
Butler has played a prominent role in the debate over health care equity and reform, focusing on social determinants of health and the use of market approaches and state innovation. He has also researched and written on a wide range of other issues, including budget process reform, the future of higher education, economic mobility, and federal entitlement reform.
Stuart Butler was born in Shrewsbury, England, and emigrated to the United States in 1975, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1995. He was educated at St. Andrews University in Scotland, where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in physics and mathematics in 1968, a Master of Arts degree in economics and history in 1971, and a Ph.D. in American economic history in 1978.
Butler has received payment for consulting from the Peterson Center on Healthcare, the Convergence Center for Policy Resolution, and UnitedHealthcare.