In memory of Barry P. Bosworth

Barry P. Bosworth, an economist with the Brookings Institution whose wide-ranging research, prolific publications, and directness in public statements and interviews informed and challenged at least two generations of economic policymakers in the U.S. and elsewhere, died on June 1, 2025, at his home in Silver Spring, Maryland. Barry Bosworth was 82 years old. The cause of his death was acute pulmonary fibrosis.

Barry Bosworth was born and raised on a small farm in rural, southwest Michigan. Upon his high school graduation in 1960, he was awarded one of the first “full ride” scholarships funded by the newly enacted National Defense Education Act of 1958. He decided to attend Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Michigan to major in aeronautical engineering. While he prospered in the academic rigor of the science and math curriculum, the cold and long winter adjacent to Lake Superior was not to his liking. He arranged to transfer his full scholarship to the University of Michigan and changed his major to economics.

Barry Bosworth received his B.A. in 1964. While an undergraduate, Barry’s quantitative skills, augmented by the tough math curriculum at Michigan Tech, and his mastery of the punch-card computer technology facilitated his admission to the economics Ph.D. program at the University of Michigan. He completed his doctorate in 1969. While still in the Ph.D. program, he worked as a staff economist with the Council of Economic Advisers at the White House under Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.

In September of 1969, Barry Bosworth accepted an appointment as assistant professor in the Department of Economics at Harvard University. However, as he told his family at the time, he found the academic environment “a little too boring” and in 1971 he took a position as a research associate in the Economic Studies program at Brookings Institution, returning to Washington, D.C. He had found his home; he stayed with Brookings for over four and a half decades.

On an extended leave from Brookings beginning in 1977, Barry Bosworth served as director of the Council on Wage and Price Stability in the White House in the administration of President Jimmy Carter. The Council had been established in 1974 by President Gerald Ford to fight inflation by dampening wage and price increases (and was itself a successor to the Pay Board and Price Commission established in 1971 by President Nixon). It was in this position that Barry Bosworth honed his reputation as an unusually candid public official, speaking plainly of the successes and failures of holding down prices and wages in attempting to counter inflation. Barry Bosworth returned to Brookings in 1979 as a senior fellow in the Economic Studies Program.

In his time at Brookings, he was principal or co-author and editor or co-editor of at least 25 books and over 150 articles and working papers on such disparate topics as trade, productivity, monetary policy and capital formation, income inequality, Social Security and population aging, the causes of inflation, and the economics of health care and higher education. His aversion to narrow specialization and his voracious curiosity led him also to investigate economic issues around the world. He researched and wrote about economic challenges and opportunities confronting countries such as Chile, Sweden, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Greece, Korea, Japan, India, and China.

Barry is survived by his wife of 60 years, Nancy Kay (DePuit) Bosworth, who worked as an elementary classroom teacher—in Michigan as Barry studied for his Ph.D.; in Massachusetts when Barry was at Harvard. After they moved to Silver Spring, Maryland she tutored children whose long-term and serious health issues kept them in hospitals or at home.

Bosworth took immense pride in the achievements of their two children. The elder, Jeff Bosworth, earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Illinois-Urbana in 2000. He is an associate professor and chair of the Department of History, Philosophy, and Political Science at Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania. Barry and Nancy’s younger son, David Bosworth, earned a Ph.D. in 2003 from the Catholic University of America. He is an associate professor of Old Testament Studies and area director of the Biblical Area in the School of Theology and Religion at Catholic University in Washington, D.C.

At home, Barry Bosworth was a gardener and builder. In their backyard in Silver Spring, Barry designed, built, and nourished a spacious, wooded mini park of huge trees, connected walking paths, fountains, a koi pond, benches, and patio seating and dining areas with a covered pergola and (multiple!) storage sheds. He planted and mulched generations of flowers, grasses, and ferns. Determined either to overcome nature or to bend it to his full advantage, he built drains and drainage tunnels, installed edging, and erected and repaired deer fencing. He installed multiple “squirrel-proof” birdfeeders, attracting a wide array of bird species and bird songs to the back yard.

In both his personal and professional life, Barry Bosworth was both acerbic and impatient while also being enormously kind and engaging. While he could be loving, he also could be crusty. He did not suffer well what he saw as foolishness—especially in elected and senior appointed officials in government or in academia. But he felt strongly and took seriously his responsibility as a teacher and a mentor. He invested his whole self in the development of his research assistants and younger colleagues, and he took great pride in their achievements.

In addition to his wife Nancy and their two sons Jeff (married to Yulia) and David (married to Britt), Barry Bosworth is survived by four grandchildren, Paris, Sydney, Alexander, and Alexander (Sasha) and two great-grandchildren, Piper and Olive, as well as his brother Brian Bosworth, and loving nieces and nephews.