Max Rashbrooke

Max Rashbrooke (born 1980) is a New Zealand journalist, political writer and researcher. He is an adjunct senior research fellow in the School of Government at Victoria University of Wellington. He has written extensively on inequality in New Zealand and other aspects of public policy.

Life and career Rashbrooke was born in Wellington in 1980, where he attended Muritai Primary School and Petone College. At Petone College he received the highest New Zealand score in the 1997 Australasian Schools English Competition. He attended Victoria University of Wellington where he was the editor of student magazine Salient and graduated in 2001 with a BA (Honours) in English literature.

In 2024, Rashbrooke, along with two co-founders, launched the Institute for Democratic and Economic Analysis (IDEA), an independent public policy think-tank.

Rashbrooke's works include four books on inequality in New Zealand published between 2013 and 2021. News website Stuff has said his first book "both coincided with and helped to motivate a national debate about the widening gap between rich and poor". and held the 2020 J.D. Stout Research Fellowship at Victoria University.

Selected works Inequality: A New Zealand Crisis (Bridget Williams Books, 2013)