The Demography and Economics of Aging Research (DEAR) program promotes research and research training at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) on aging-related social, economic, and demographic behavior. The program has been supported by a K07 award from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and received a P30 center grant award from NIA in September 2004. The center grant award allows the DEAR program to expand its activities in support of research on population aging. This program is led by Dr. Edward Norton, a health economist and Associate Professor of Health Policy and Administration, and Dr. Peter Uhlenberg, demographer and Professor of Sociology, and is administered by the Carolina Population Center. Specific activities of the program include:

• Seed funding for pilot studies on issues in the demography and economics of aging intended to lead to grant proposals submitted for external funding.
• Sponsorship of seminars by outside speakers on demography and economics of aging research.
• Support for an internal UNC working group of researchers with research interests in the DEAR area.

External support for population aging studies is combined with internal support to build a base of scientific interest and research and training capacity at UNC-CH. The Carolina Population Center is a pan-campus unit with the mission to coordinate population research and research training at UNC-CH. Demographic and economics research on aging is enhanced by formal collaboration with the Institute on Aging (IOA), sited on the UNC-CH campus.

Activities supported by the DEAR program include the following:

Graduate Course: A graduate course on the Demography and Economics of Aging is offered periodically (most recently by David Blau in Spring 2006). This seminar course provides an opportunity for advanced graduate students from several UNC-CH departments to become familiar with the main issues and methods in current research in these areas.

Deadline for Pilot Project Proposals: The deadline for applications for Spring 2008 is April 1, 2008.

Pilot Projects:  Calls for proposals have been issued in the Fall and Spring each year since 2001. The proposals funded to date include the following:

"Informal Care and Medicare Expenditures," Courtney Harold Van Houtven, postdoctoral fellow, Sheps Center for Health Services Research (now at the Durham VA Hospital, Center for Health Services Research in Primary Care). This project analyzes the association between informal care of the elderly and Medicare expenditures, using data from the AHEAD survey linked to administrative Medicare claims records.

"An Evaluation of the Impact of the Social Security Disability Insurance Program on Labor Force Participation in the 1990s," Wilbert van der Klaauw, Department of Economics and Carolina Population Center (now at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York). This project analyzes the effect of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) on labor force participation of men. Data from the 1990-1996 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation are matched to administrative Social Security records that contain information on SSDI applications and awards.

"Family Care and Support for the Elderly in China," Guang Guo, Department of Sociology and Carolina Population Center. This project studies the demographic determinants of family care of elderly parents in China. Data from two surveys are used to analyze how families cope with the consequences of drastically reduced fertility in an environment with few or no public programs to support the elderly.

"Using Historical Records to Reconstruct Early Life Socioeconomic Status Exposures in Decedents," Kathryn Rose, Department of Epidemiology. This project is conducting an exploratory effort to match information from a sample of death certificates to Social Security records, birth certificates, and census records.

"Nutrition and Aging in African Americans," June Stevens, Department of Nutrition. This project laid the groundwork for development of an application for external funding to analyze the nutritional determinants of health and nursing home entry among African Americans. The analysis uses secondary data on a large sample of African American men and women from the longitudinal Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study.

"Costa Rican Healthy Aging Study," William Dow, Department of Health Policy and Administration, and Carolina Population Center (now at the University of California at Berkeley). This project developed an external grant application for a panel survey of the elderly in Costa Rica. The survey will be the basis for a series of studies of longevity determinants and differentials.

"Socioeconomic Status and Trajectories of Health across the Life Course," Kim Shuey and Andrea Willson, Carolina Population Center (now at University of Western Ontario). This project analyzes the dynamic relationship between socioeconomic status and health over the life course, and the cumulative effects of poverty on health.

"The Effect of Increasing Longevity on Long-Term Care Use," Sally Stearns, Department of Health Policy and Administration. This project studies the association between increasing longevity and living arrangements of the elderly. The analysis uses data from the National Long Term Care Surveys and the Health and Retirement Study to estimate models explaining choice among a nursing home, formal in-home care, and informal in-home care. One part of the analysis will focus on the individual as the unit of analysis, and a second part will examine the impact of increasing male longevity on household demand for long-term care among couples.

"Alcohol and Unintentional Home Injury Death among Older Adults in North Carolina," Carri Casteel, Injury Prevention Research Center. This project will use data from North Carolina death certificates and medical examiner reports to examine the association between alcohol and death resulting from injuries at home. The pilot study will serve as the basis for an external proposal for a larger study based on emergency room admissions.

"Structural Models of Consumer Optimization Behavior: Labor, Retirement, and Health," Donna Gilleskie, Department of Economics. This project will organize a conference on structural estimation of models of behavior, to be held in the Triangle area in Fall 2006. The conference will bring together researchers who use this methodology to facilitate exchange of ideas, dissemination of methods, and discussion of policy applications. Many of the applications of the methods are in the area of retirement and health of the elderly.

"Developmental Determinants of Young Adult Risk Factors for Aging-Related Chronic Disease," Linda Adair, Department of Nutrition and Carolina Population Center. This project will fund collection and analysis of a comprehensive panel of biomarkers and cardiovascular disease risk factors as part of a follow-up survey of the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey. This survey has followed a sample of children in Cebu (Philippines) from birth through age 22. The biomarker data will make this survey a valuable resource for studying the early antecedents of later life health outcomes.

"Obesity, Physical Activity, and the Built Environment," Barry Popkin and Penny Gordon-Larsen, Department of Nutrition and Carolina Population Center. The long-term goal of this project is to examine changes in environments over time, and the effect of these changes on physical activity behavior and subsequent weight dynamics. The pilot project will use a variety of methods to validate the existing Obesity and Environment database for Add Health (a nationally representative study), including field-based assessments of location and counts of resources in two Add Health community locations in comparison to a GIS-derived database.

"Using Genetic Information to Identify Causal Effects of Obesity," Edward Norton, Department of Health Policy and Administration. This project will study the effect of obesity on economic and health outcomes using a novel empirical method. The proposed method uses genetic information to identify the causal impact of obesity. The pilot project will use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to establish the feasibility of the approach. The study will investigate other data sets with coverage of the older population, in order to determine the feasibility of adding collection of genetic data and thereby cover a broader part of the life span.

"Age-Related Changes in Emotion-Based Decision Making," Keith Payne, Department of Psychology. This project will study the role of emotion in decision making by older adults, compared to younger adults. The key hypotheses are that decline in cognitive function with age will cause greater reliance on emotion in making decisions, and that individuals who are adept at regulating their emotions will benefit the most from this shift. A pilot study of decision making by 30 older and 30 younger adults in a laboratory setting will be conducted to provide preliminary results that will serve as the basis for a proposal to NIA.

"Labor Market Rigidities and the Employment Behavior of Older Workers," David Blau, Department of Economics and Carolina Population Center (now at Ohio State University). This project will generate new information on the labor market for older workers by using rich longitudinal survey data on individuals matched to confidential employment and earnings data on the firms that employ them. The individual data are from the Survey of Program Participation and the employer data are from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics files. The project aims to address issues such as: What accounts for differences in the age structure of employment across firms? What is the association between the age composition of employment and hiring on the one hand, and hours worked and the rate of exit of older workers on the other hand?

"Why is the Labor Force Participation Rate of Older Men Rising?" David Blau, Department of Economics and Carolina Population Center (now at Ohio State University). The long secular trend of declining labor force participation by older men in the U.S. apparently ended in the 1980s. This declining trend had been in progress for men aged 55 to 64 since about 1950. For men age 65 and older, the trend had been in progress almost without interruption since the 1870s. The labor force participation rate of older men reached a nadir in the mid 1980s, remained roughly constant for about a decade, and began to increase noticeably in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The goals of this project are to quantitatively assess a number of explanations for the rise in male employment, and to use the results to analyze how alternative policies and demographic and economic trends will affect employment of older men in the future.

"Exploring Paths to Differential Disability Trajectories," Miles Taylor, CPC postdoctoral fellow. The goal of the proposed research is to examine causal pathways for long-term disability trajectories (10-15 years) in a nationally representative sample of older adults. The analysis will examine the interplay of sociodemographic variables, chronic disease, intra-individual characteristics and extra-individual factors in predicting disability trajectories. The proposed research will utilize the National Long Term Care Survey and the Medicare and Vital Statistics linked files. These analyses will utilize longitudinal methods including latent class analysis, latent growth curves, and event history analysis.

"Intergenerational Links and Population Aging," Oksana Leukhina, Department of Economics and Carolina Population Center, and Marika Santoro, Congressional Budget Office. Although much attention has recently been given to the subject of population aging, and the importance of studying its effect on aggregate outcomes has been highlighted, this phenomenon has not been studied in a framework that recognizes the key role of inter vivos transfers and bequests. Studies that abstract from intergenerational links when investigating population aging effects on capital accumulation and asset markets disregard an important part of the wealth accumulation/distribution mechanism. Indeed, previous research has concluded that intergenerational flows are of central importance for understanding patterns of aggregate capital accumulation, wealth distribution, and differences in wealth accumulation patterns across households in the U.S. The main objective of the proposed research is to investigate the effect of population aging on macroeconomic outcomes in a framework that accounts for the presence and observed features of intergenerational within-family transfers. The particular focus will be on the impact of population aging on capital accumulation and asset returns.

Outside speakers: In Fall 2005, Mark Duggan of the University of Maryland presented "Aching to Retire? The Rise in the Full Retirement Age and Its Impact on the Disability Rolls," and Dan Silverman of the University of Michigan presented "Sources of Advantageous Selection: Evidence from the Medigap Insurance Market," both in the Department of Economics Labor Workshop. Kathleen McGarry of UCLA presented "Testing Parental Altruism: Implications of a Dynamic Model" in the Health Economics Workshop. Michael Hurd of RAND presented "Expected Bequests and their Distribution" in the Carolina Population Center seminar. Peter Diamond of MIT, the president-elect of the American Economic Association, presented a lecture on "Social Security Reform" in the Department of Economics. The DEAR program also sponsored a CPC seminar by Edward Norton on "Longevity and Elderly Health Care Expenditures," and co-sponsored an Institute of Aging distinguished lecture by Joseph Quinn, Dean of Boston College, on "Social Security Reform."

Secure data facility: With support from the DEAR program, a Secure Data Facility (SDF) was established at the Carolina Population Center in Spring 2002. The SDF has controlled entry and computing equipment configured to accommodate only authorized users and appropriate use. The one entry is always locked. Keys are locked in an off-site safe used exclusively for the SDF. Users gain access to the SDF through the use of a combination lock, and the combination is changed whenever anyone loses authorization to use the SDF. Inside the SDF are two protected computers, networked to each other and a secured printer only, with software needed by the researcher. The SDF has already been used as a site for research with restricted data from the Health and Retirement Study, one of the major data resources in the aging area, and other researchers are planning to use it for this purpose.