Research > Research Themes > Growth and Structure of Populations > Aging and age structure

This is an enormous presence at the PSC, but we do not emphasize it in this application because populations and aging has substantial institutional support from an NIA P30 grant to Penn’s Population Aging Reseach Center (PARC). Soldo is the PI, Preston the founder and past PI, and the majority of program scientists on this application have roles or associations with PARC. Examples of aging research by R24 research scientists include: Kohler (with Chao, Soldo, Behman, and Watkins) has a new NICHD R01 to study AIDS consequences in high mortality populations, including age structure effects; Ewbank is beginning work, using Framingham data, on genetics and longevity; Elo is beginning a comparative project on aging and household types in the US and Europe; Ríos-Rull has papers on the living arrangements of widows and population welfare aspects of social security; Polsky looks at the life cycle aspects of health insurance (the extension of health coverage at age 65 to the elderly has differential effects on health depending on prior insurance status); Park, in Soc Forces, shows that in Korea the relationship between SES and health is not attenuated by age; Schnittker argues that age-related changes in self-evaluations of health reflect shifts in the meaning of mental health, and concomitant social support, across the life cycle; Mitchell studies aging, age structure and retirement, and in a paper in J Monet Econ compares savings behavior of the baby boom cohort with prior cohorts (boomers more reliant on housing equity); Madden has recently reviewed the literature on the effects of the aging of the baby boom cohort on financial and real estate markets; Fernández-Villaverde, with D. Krueger, in Rev Econ Stat, shows that the age patterns of consumption across the life cycle are not congruent with received economic theory, since they are only attributable in part to changes in family arrangements; Furstenberg, in his book On the Frontier of Adulthood, shows how the timing of adulthood has altered with economic and demographic change; Todd (with Behrman, Mitchell, and Pauly) has an NIA R01 on Chilean social protection policies and aging (A2.1); and Soldo, in addition to her NIA P30 PARC and NIA T32 training grants, and her work on MHAS and the HRS, is PI on 2 NIA R01s, on family culture and intergenerational location and on aging and selection relative to the SES gradient in health.