Topics of research interest include achievement gap, opportunity gap, and educational disparities, policy analysis, rural development, migration, evaluation, economic analysis, demography, labor economics, income inequality and poverty, impact evaluation

Janna E. Johnson is an assistant professor in the social policy and policy analysis area. An economic demographer, her primary research focuses on the causes and consequences of internal migration within the United States, both historic and current. She also works on data quality issues, particularly U.S. Census undercount, and their impact on empirical research using Census data.

An expert in econometric methods used to evaluate programs and policies, she teaches advanced statistical methods classes at the Humphrey School at the master’s and PhD level. Recently, her work has been featured in The Weekly Standard, Bloomberg, and The Washington Post.

Johnson is an affiliate of the Minnesota Population Center (MPC) and a member of the University’s graduate faculty in population studies and applied economics. She is a native of Grand Rapids, Minnesota.