Jo Blanden graduated from the University of East Anglia in 1998, she then studied for a Masters degree in Economics at University College London. From 2000 to 2005 she was a full-time researcher in the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at the London School of Economics and completed her PhD at UCL over this time. She joined the Department of Economics at Surrey in October 2005 and is a Visiting Fellow at the LSE.