About
Henry J. Aaron
Bruce and Virginia McLaury Senior Fellow in the Economic Studies Program, Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., USA
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Henry Aaron has extensive research experience in a number of topics affecting older generations, including Social Security, healthcare financing, Medicaid and Medicare, income distribution, and tax policy. Affiliated with the Brookings Institution since 1968, he is currently investigating Medicare reform and healthcare rationing among other topics touching on the economics of future medical practice.
Aaron obtained a B.A. in political science and economics from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1958. He completed graduate study at Harvard, earning an M.A. in Russian regional studies in 1960 and a Ph.D. in economics in 1963. He has served on numerous planning and policy-making boards and panels and chaired the 1978-79 Advisory Council on Social Security. In 1977-78 he was Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. During the academic year 1996-97 he was a Guggenheim Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. He currently chairs the board of directors of the National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI) after serving as NASI's vice president for many years.
Among the many publications he has had a hand in writing or editing are "The Impact of an Aging Population" in Restoring Fiscal Sanity: How to Balance the Budget (2004), Coping with Methuselah (ed., 2004), The Future of Academic Medical Centers (ed., 2001), Should the United States Privatize Social Security? (1999), and Countdown to Reform: The Great Social Security Debate (1998/2001).