Susann Rohwedder (she/her) is a senior economist at the RAND Corporation, associate director of the RAND Center for the Study of Aging, and professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. Her research focuses on the economics of aging, with emphasis on the financial security of the older population and the relationship between financial security and health; it encompasses studies of household wealth, income consumption and saving, retirement, and pensions, and risks of out-of-pocket health care spending and long-term care expenses. An important emphasis is inequalities by race and ethnicity in economic and health outcomes, including differential trends in survival and dementia prevalence.
Rohwedder has extensive experience in survey design and data collection: she is jointly responsible for the design of the HRS Consumption and Activities Mail Survey, led the design and collection of 61 waves for Financial Crisis Surveys fielded on the RAND American Life Panel, and played a leading role in the design and establishment of the Singapore Life Panel. She directs the RAND HRS Data Development Effort, which produces user-friendly longitudinal data sets combining information from the first to the latest HRS wave.
Rohwedder is a research fellow of the Network for Studies on Pensions, Aging, and Retirement, Netherlands; serves on the Board of Directors of the Western Economic Association International, and is associate editor of the Journal of the Economics of Ageing. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in economics from University College London, and Master's degrees from the University of Warwick and the Sorbonne.
Selected Publications
Hudomiet, P., Hurd, M.D., & Rohwedder, S., "Trends in Inequalities in the Prevalence of Dementia in the U.S.," Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, 119(46), 2022
Hudomiet, P., Hurd, M.D., & Rohwedder, S., "Forecasting Mortality Inequalities in the U.S. Based on Trends in Midlife Health," Journal of Health Economics, 80(Art. No. 1), 2021
Hudomiet, P., Hurd, M.D., & Rohwedder, S., "The age profile of life satisfaction after age 65 in the U.S.," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 189, 2021
Hudomiet, P., Hurd, M.D., & Rohwedder, S., "The Relationship Between Lifetime Out-of-pocket Medical Expenditures, Dementia, and Socioeconomic Status in the U.S.," Journal of the Economics of Ageing, 14(Art. No. 1), 2019
Hurd, M.D., Michaud, P.-C., & Rohwedder, S., "Distribution of lifetime nursing home use and of out‐of‐pocket spending," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(37), 2017
Been, J., Rohwedder, S., & Hurd, M.D., "Does Home Production Replace Consumption Spending? Evidence from Shocks in Housing Wealth in the Great Recession," Review of Economics and Statistics, 2018
Rohwedder, S., & Willis, R.J., "Mental Retirement," Journal of Economic Perspectives, 24(1), 2010
Delavande, A., & Rohwedder, S., "Differential Survival in Europe and the United States: Estimates Based on Subjective Probabilities of Survival," Demography, 48(4), 2011