Michael Hurd

Overview

Michael D. Hurd is a Senior Principal Researcher and Director of the RAND Center for the Study of Aging and a Research Associate at NBER. His research covers wealth dynamics, health and retirement, mortality risk, subjective expectations, and the economics of aging. He is a leading user and contributor to the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). He is co-author of Adams, Hurd, McFadden et al. (2003) on causal paths between health and socioeconomic status, and of Heiss et al. (2007) on latent health trajectories and selective mortality.

Key Contributions

• Adams, Hurd, McFadden et al. (2003) — co-author; tests for direct causal paths between health and socioeconomic status using HRS data; Journal of Econometrics 112: 3–56.
• Heiss et al. (2007) — co-author; latent Ornstein-Uhlenbeck health model; selective mortality bias in HRS panels; work disability OR = 1.76 for mortality; 43 pp survival gap by initial health status. See DI Beneficiary Mortality and Morbidity-Mortality Distinction.
• Subjective expectations research: Extensive work on how older Americans form and update expectations about mortality, health, and wealth — methodology used throughout HRS-based empirical aging research.

Related

• Florian Heiss
• Axel Börsch-Supan
• David Wise
• Health and Retirement Study
• DI Beneficiary Mortality
• Morbidity-Mortality Distinction
• Selective Mortality

Sources

• Heiss Borsch-Supan Hurd and Wise 2007 — Pathways to Disability Predicting Health Trajectories
• Poterba Venti and Wise 2010 — Family Status Transitions, Latent Health, and the Post-Retirement Evolution of Assets