Funds of this grant support a new program at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) to sponsor a postdoctoral research fellow in each of the next three academic years, beginning in 2014 to 2015, whose research will focus on the economics of the aging workforce. Each fellow will receive one year of support to carry out research at NBER’s offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as well as to participate in the NBER summer institute workshops on Aging and Labor Studies. Selection of the three fellows will be made by a panel of experts who are members of both the Aging and Labor Studies programs at NBER. The committee’s decisions will be based on an evaluation of the fellows’ potential to make an important contribution to the understanding of the behavior of older workers and the functioning of labor markets for these workers.

One difficulty in understanding the labor market behavior of older workers is that much of the needed data is not available. For instance, the National Institute on Aging’s Health and Retirement Survey—the gold standard data set for examining aging—does not collect detailed information about the pecuniary and nonpecuniary job characteristics of older workers. As such, trends in retirement and other labor market behaviors of older workers cannot be correlated with data about what their jobs are like. This grant provides support for a project by the Rand Corporation to correct this gap by collecting new data describing the actual and preferred working conditions of approximately 2,200 older Americans between the ages of 55 and 70 in the ongoing, nationally representative RAND American Life Panel (ALP). The new dataset will be made publicly available to the broader research community; will serve as encouragement to younger scholars to do research on aging and work; and will inform evidence-based conversations with the National Institute on Aging about adding items on the pecuniary and nonpecuniary attributes of work to the Health and Retirement Survey.

Funds from this grant support an innovative study by Harvard University that explores how colleges and universities can promote faculty diversity. Led by Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev and utilizing an original institutional-individual database on 13,000 faculty at 1,000 institutions from 1993 to 2013, the project team will examine the effects of academic hiring, promotion, diversity and work-life policies, and implementation supports on overall faculty diversity; career progress of STEM faculty from all race/ethnic-by-gender groups; and faculty family formation. Additionally, the team will specifically evaluate the impact of the Sloan Awards for Faculty Career Flexibility on these outcomes, and on the spread of flexibility policies beyond awardees and applicants.

With support from this grant, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Foundation will work to accelerate and advance research and applications to understand and solve workforce aging issues in the United States, with a particular emphasis on reaching human resource professionals. SHRM Foundation will pursue multiple strategies related to research, education, and production of materials. They will conduct a review of the relevant economic, legal, and social science literature on older workers and summarize those findings for a non-specialist audience; they will study human resource policy and practice trends related to older workers; and they will develop new tools and programs to incentivize the adoption of best human resource practices with regard to the aging workforce. Expected products include four studies, an Effective Practice Guidelines report, an Aging Workforce Strategies DVE, and executive roundtable event, a webinar series, and an online Resource Guide/Toolkit for HR practitioners.

This grant supports research by Robert Clark and Melinda Morrill of North Carolina State University that will study the labor market behavior of more than 875,000 public employees in North Carolina. Collaborating with the office of the North Carolina Treasurer, Clark and Morrill will investigate a series of four interrelated questions retirement in the public sector. One, how do older public employees prepare for this transition through saving for retirement? Two, how do older public employees determine their optimal retirement age from their career employer? Three, do those workers retiring from public employment move into complete retirement or extend their working life by seeking post-retirement work elsewhere? Four, how do individuals choose among annuity options within their defined benefit and defined contribution plans? The research plan involves analysis of administrative data, three employee and retirement surveys, and a field experiment that tests how information affects employees’ retirement savings behavior.

Funds from this grant support the extension of a fellowship program at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) that places behavioral and social scientists in government agencies to help the government implement innovative and evidence-based policies that promote better decision making by citizens and better performance by government.  AAAS’s existing fellowship program supports one fellow, placed at the Office of Science and Technology policy.  Funds from this grant will enable that fellowship to continue while adding an additional fellow in 2014 and one in 2015.

Funds from this grant support the development of a new Healthcare Reporting Unit at New York City radio station WNYC.   The contemplated unit will use personal stories to spotlight issues in American healthcare with an emphasis on research and policy, taking a consumer-friendly approach that links lived experience to broader systemic issues in the health care system through documentary-style reports, banded segments for local and national news programs, hour-long specials, podcasts, and partnerships with leaders in healthcare journalism. The grant will provide funds for convening diverse panel of experts, assembling an advisory board, and conducting research for targeted reporting on healthcare policy in New York and surrounding states, including research on the impact of the Affordable Care Act on consumers.

This grant provides three years of continued support for the production and distribution of WNYC’s Radiolab, the popular award-winning radio show hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich. Each year for the next three years, the Radiolab team will use grant funds to produce 12 to 15 hours of original audio-based scientific content for broadcast on the show, including 10 hour-long episodes, 16 podcasts, 2 interactive “activities” for web audiences, and between 8 and 10 real-time science demonstrations to be used in the annual Radiolab live tour. Additional funds will allow expansion of the weekly Radiolab broadcast to include 500 radio stations.

This grant provides three years of support for WNYC’s award-winning radio show, Studio 360, hosted by Kurt Andersen, to continue its popular Science and Creativity series. Studio 360 features the latest research and findings in science and technology, relating these developments to arts, culture, and everyday life. Grant funds support a large, diverse board of science advisors for the program, a major planning meeting that flies in experts from around the country, a science-programming consultant, high-quality freelance reporting, and outside contributors who assist the full-time staff. Also supported are a series of live events which aim to engage a younger, more diverse audience than traditional radio broadcasts.

This grant to Yale University supports the planning and development of a new “Program on Financial Stability” aimed at training a new generation of experts on financial regulation. Led by Yale Finance and Management professor Andrew Metrick, the program will aim to translate and synthesize research on macroprudential regulation that speaks to practitioners; compile case studies containing raw data and documentation that describe the interaction between regulation and firm behavior; train early-career scholar-regulators employed by major national and international agencies; and help build an international community of scholars, regulators, and financial experts. If successful, the program promises to provide an invaluable training resource that responds to the need to develop the human, social, and intellectual capital that financial regulators need to fend off future financial crises.