Hilary Waldron

Overview

Hilary Waldron is an economist at SSA's Division of Economic Research, Office of Research, Evaluation, and Statistics (ORES). Her work focuses on mortality differentials by socioeconomic status using Social Security administrative data. She is the primary researcher who established the widening income-mortality gradient in the U.S. using cohort analysis of SSA records.

Key Contributions

• Early retirement and mortality (Waldron 2001): first quantification of the retirement-age mortality gradient using the 1973 CPS Exact Match matched to SSA admin records through 1998; men claiming retired-worker benefits at exactly age 62 face 38% greater odds of dying than men claiming at 65+, with a discontinuity between exact-62 and men retiring just months later that identifies a quasi-disability subgroup; also documents a benefit-optimization mechanism (men with below-average life expectancy self-selecting into earliest claiming because actuarial reductions favor the short-lived); establishes that collapsing early retirees into a single category mutes the age-62 spike; the age-62 mortality discontinuity is subsequently referenced in Waldron (2004) and by Fitzpatrick and Moore (2017)
• Heterogeneity among early retirees (Waldron 2004): tested three competing models of early retiree health/mortality composition (health dichotomy, benefits-optimization, health trichotomy) using SIPP linked to SSA admin data (health analysis) and the 1973 CPS Exact Match (mortality analysis); central finding is that the majority of male SS claimants before age 65 are in worse health than age-65 retirees — refuting the prevailing view that only a minority are health-compromised; the trichotomy model fits best, with Group C (health equal to age-65 retirees) concentrated in top-earnings-quartile men retiring at age 64; the benefits-optimization mechanism (below-average life expectancy → self-selection into age-62 claiming) is supported as a driver alongside poor health
• Mortality differentials by earnings (Waldron 2007): extended analysis to earnings-based SES proxy; documented widening cohort LE gap (1.2 → 5.8 years at age 60, birth cohorts 1912–1941); international comparison showing US low earners rank near bottom of OECD
• DI incidence growth decomposition (Pattison and Waldron 2013): Törnqvist chained-index decomposition of 36-year growth in new disabled-worker entitlements; found 90% attributable to demographic factors (population growth, female insured-rate convergence, baby boom aging); showed unadjusted incidence creates a spurious post-1990 acceleration that disappears once age/sex composition is controlled for

Related

• Income-Mortality Gradient
• Period Mortality
• Select and Ultimate Mortality Tables
• DI Growth Decomposition
• David Pattison
• Social Security Administration
• Office of the Chief Actuary
• Raj Chetty

Sources

• Waldron 2001 — Links Between Early Retirement and Mortality
• Waldron 2004 — Heterogeneity in Health and Mortality Risk Among Early Retiree Men
• Waldron 2007 — Trends in Mortality Differentials and Life Expectancy for Male Social Security–Covered Workers, by Socioeconomic Status
• Pattison and Waldron 2013 — Growth in New Disabled-Worker Entitlements, 1970–2008
• Bor Cohen and Galea 2017 — Population Health in an Era of Rising Income Inequality USA 1980–2015
• Bound et al 2015 — Measuring Recent Apparent Declines In Longevity The Role Of Increasing Educational Attainment
• Rutledge 2018 — How Is the Mortality Gap Affecting Social Security Progressivity
• Sanzenbacher et al 2017 — Rising Inequality in Life Expectancy by Socioeconomic Status
• Van de Water 2015 — The Realities of Work for Individuals with Disabilities
• Zhou et al. — Modeling Mortality of Multiple Populations with Vector Error Correction Models