Regina T. Riphahn studied economics, business administration, and sociology at the Universities of Cologne, Sussex (U.K.), Bonn, Tennessee, and North Carolina. She received an M.B.A. at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and in 1995 a Ph.D. in economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She joined the University of Munich's economics department in May 1995 and in March 1999 completed her post-doctoral habilitation. Between October 2000 and September 2001 she taught at the University of Mainz (Germany) as an Associate Professor of Economic Policy. From October 2001 through March 2005 she headed the statistics and econometrics group at the economics department of the University of Basel (Switzerland). Since April 2005 she holds the chair for Statistics and Empirical Economics at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (Germany). Her research interests are in the economics of education, personnel, labor, social policy, population economics, and applied microeconometrics.

Regina T. Riphahn is a fellow of IZA and a research professor of DIW Berlin. She has published in journals such as the Journal of the European Economic Association, Journal of Development Economics, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Journal of Human Resources, and the Journal of Population Economics. Regina T. Riphahn was awarded several scholarships for studies in England, Spain, Chile, and the United States. She received a Fulbright grant (1988-1989), the University of North Carolina economics departments' Lurcy Fellowship, and in 2000 a prize for the best paper written with the GSOEP data since 1984. She worked at the Central Bank of Chile (1989), The World Bank (1990), and at the Carolina Population Center (1991-1995). She served in the Swiss council of economic advisors, has been elected to the council of the European Society of Labour Economists (EALE), is council member of the German Economic Association, and served as the treasurer of the European Society for Population Economics (ESPE).She headed the scientific council of the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (2005-2007), is the coordinator of the Bavarian Graduate Program in Economics (since 2005), member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and of the scientific advisory councils of the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, of DIW Berlin, and RWI Essen. Between 2008 and 2014 she was a member of the Wissenschaftsrat (German Council of Science and Humanities) and 2012-2014 she chaired its scientific commission. Since 2014 she is an elected member and the chair of the German Data Forum (Rat für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsdaten). Since 2017 she is Vice President of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. Since 2018 she is member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities and of Academia Europaea.