Demography and Economics of Aging and the Life Course

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The Carolina Population Center (CPC) requests support for the Demography and Economics of Aging Research (DEAR) Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH). The DEAR Center will be housed at CPC and will collaborate with the Institute on Aging (IoA) at UNC-CH to support a research program in population aging. The DEAR Center will build on and extend the on-going DEAR program at UNC-CH. The DEAR Center will continue and expand the activities supported by the program: (1) awarding small grants for pilot projects to support development of proposals for external funding; (2) supporting a secure data facility for analysis of restricted-use population aging and other data at CPC; (3) bringing prominent outside speakers to campus to discuss their population aging research; and (4) supporting a working group to foster increased collaboration among UNCCH scholars with research interests in population aging. The DEAR Center will have an Administrative and Research Support Core and a Program Development Core. The scientific community served by the DEAR Center includes 23 faculty affiliates with population aging research interests, of whom 13 serve as lead investigators on total of 20 externally funded research grants on aging-related topics. Nine of these active grants are on DEAR related topics. The research topics investigated by affiliates of the DEAR program span a broad range of the population aging field, and are centered on the following themes: 1. Implications of population aging for labor force participation, income security during retirement, and the determinants of retirement, savings, and living standards of the elderly; 2. The implications of changes in health, functional capacity, chronic disease, disability, and mortality among the elderly for long term care arrangements and medical expenditure; 3. The association between health and demographic, social, and economic factors over the life course; and 4. The nutrition transition in developing countries and its implications for the increasing incidence among the elderly of chronic diseases such as arthritis, diabetes, hypertension, renal failure, and coronary disease.