Simon Chapple

Simon Chapple
Child well-being
Social Policy Division
Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris

Simon was born in New Zealand. He has postgraduate degrees in Economics from
Auckland University, Cambridge University, and Victoria University (Wellington). In a working career spanning eighteen years he has worked as a public servant in New Zealand for the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and the Department of Labour.

He has also worked in the private sector for the NZ Institute of Economic Research. For the last six years he has been Chief Economist at the Ministry of Social Development, working on issues of strategic social policy, including child and family policy. He is currently on secondment from this position in Paris for two years to work on an OECD project on child wellbeing.

"I am currently leading an OECD Social Policy Division project on child wellbeing. This involves an assessment of the broad range of policies and programmes across the 30 member countries of the OECD designed to promote child wellbeing and development, considered in terms of the child's life cycle. Education, from early childhood through the compulsory system and on to higher education, is central to this process in all OECD countries."