History of Disability talk at NIH, 12 September

[An announcement posted on the H-Net today. I added the links.--PLR]

CHRONIC DISEASE AND DISABILITY FROM THE 19TH TO THE 21ST CENTURIES: AN INTERVIEW WITH DRS. ROBERT W. FOGEL AND DORA L. COSTA

September 12, 2006, 2:30 to 4:00 pm
Natcher Conference Center (Bldg. 45), Balcony C
National Institutes of Health
Bethesda, Maryland

Dr. Robert W. Fogel of the University of Chicago, the Nobel Laureate in Economics whose work has revolutionized thinking about the history of health in the U.S., will appear with colleague Dr. Dora L. Costa of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to discuss findings from their NIA Program Project grant on the aging process of Union Army veterans. This ambitious project links vast amounts of information for a sample of Union Army veterans to allow researchers to study their aging process and compare it to that of later cohorts. Drs. Fogel and Costa will present their surprising findings from this study, which reveal a picture of humans today that is vastly different from 100 years ago. They will examine what their research suggests for current and future aging populations - cohorts that today are longer-lived, healthier, more affluent, and more urban than their predecessors - and what these trends imply for health, long-term care, and social security systems. Facilitating this lively discussion will be Drs. Angus Deaton and Burton Singer of Princeton University.

Dr. Robert W. Fogel, PI of the NIA Program Project, won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1993. He is the Charles R. Walgreen Distinguished Service Professor of American Institutions at the Graduate School of Business and Director of the Center for Population Economics at the University of Chicago. His numerous publications include Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (with Stanley L. Engerman), The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism, and The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700-2100 (based on the Union Army project).

Dr. Dora L. Costa, Project Leader and Senior Investigator on the NIA Program Project, is Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she teaches economic history. She is the author of The Evolution of Retirement: An American Economic History, 1880-1990 (based on data from the Union Army project).

Sponsoring this seminar are the National Institute on Aging, the National Library of Medicine, and the NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research. For more information, contact:

Georgeanne E. Patmios
Behavioral and Social Research Program
National Institute on Aging
National Institutes of Health
Tel: 301-496-3138
Email: PatmiosG@mail.nih.gov

[Image above: Disabled Union Army veteran Peter Mitchell, of the 7th Maine Volunteer Regiment, with his wife, Alice; found here.]