
Karen Holden
Professor
Email: holden@lafollette.wisc.edu
Office: SoHE 370 C
Website: http://aging.wisc.edu/research/affil.php?Ident=24
http://www.lafollette.wisc.edu/facultystaff/holden-karen.html
Professor of Consumer Science and La Follette School of Public Affairs
Department of Consumer Science
School of Human Ecology
University of Wisconsin-Madison
1300 Linden Drive
Madison, WI 53706 USA
Phone: 608-263-9283
Karen Holden, Professor of Consumer Science, holds a joint appointment with the La Follette School of Public Affairs. She received her doctorate in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.
She is a Faculty Affiliate and Steering Committee member at the Center for the Health and Demography of Aging, Center for Demography and Ecology, and Institute on Aging. She is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America, a founding member of the National Academy of Social Insurance, and an Associate of the Fellows program of the Employee Benefit Research Institute. She is a former Associate Director of the La Follette School of Public Affairs. In 1986-87 she was a Visiting Economist at the Social Security Administration's Office of Research and Statistics.
Her research focuses on the effects of social security and pension policy on economic status after retirement and widowhood. Previous work has examined issues in the areas of disability, welfare reform, mandatory retirement policies, and risk of nursing home care. Professor Holden is currently evaluating the Wisconsin pilot of Social Security's Early Intervention Program, a pilot that is expected to lead to a national demonstration of effects on employment of providing immediate Medicare benefits, SSDI benefits, and employment assistance to SSDI applicants prior to disability determination. Other current projects include an examination of savings adequacy among retired persons and the permanently disabled. She is working (with a Consumer Science graduate student) on expectations of preparation for long-term care.
Representative Publications
Zick, C, and Holden, K.C. (2000). An assessment of the wealth holdings of recent widows. Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences: Social Science 55(2):S90-S97.
Holden, K.C., and Reynolds, A. (2000). Process evaluation of W-2: What it is, why it is useful, and how to do it? In,B. Barnow, T. Kapaln, & R. Moffitt (Eds.). Evaluating comprehensive state welfare reform. Albany NY: The Rockefeller Institute Press.
Holden, K.C., and Hansen, W.L. (2000). Reflections on an earlier study of mandatory retirement: What came true and what we can still learn. In R. Clark & B. Hammond (Eds.). To retire or not: Examining retirement policy and behavior in higher education. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Spratlin, J., and Holden, K. (2000). Women and economic security in retirement: implications for social security reform. Journal of Family and Economic Issues 21(1).
Holden, K. (2001). Chronic and disabling conditions: The economic costs to individuals and society. The public policy and aging report, 11 (2),1-6 (Washington D. C: National Academy on an Aging Society).
Rappaport, A., and Holden, K. (2002). Risk management and insurance. In D.J.Ekerdt (Ed.), The Macmillan encyclopedia of aging (Vol 26). New York: Macmillan Reference USA, an Imprint of the Gale Group.
Holden, K, and Brand, J. (2003). Income change and distribution upon widowhood: Comparison of Britain, U.S., and Germany. In E. Overbye, and P. Kemp (Eds.), Pensions: Challenges and reform. Aldershot, Ashgate.
Haveman, R., Holden, K., Wilson, K. and Wolfe, B. (2003). Social Security, Age-of-retirement, and economic wellbeing: Intertemporal and demographic patterns among retired-worker beneficiaries. Demography. 40(2):369-394

