Overview
Gal Wettstein is a senior research economist at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College (CRR). His research spans mortality forecasting, Social Security finance, and retirement economics. Lead author of the 2022 CRR brief examining the survivor selection effect of COVID-19 on projected mortality rates.
Key Contributions / Features
- COVID survivor selection (Wettstein et al. 2022): Showed that COVID-19's selective mortality among already-high-risk individuals reduced post-pandemic 10-year mortality by
1 pp for the oldest groups; selection effect is real but modest relative to the aggregate COVID mortality burden; selection efficiency declines with age (80% realized for 60s, ~50% for 90s)
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