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Karen Holden
Professor of Public Affairs and Consumer Science
Faculty Affiliate, Institute for Research on Poverty, Center for the
Demography and Health of Aging, Institute on Aging
Office: 340 School of Human Ecology Building
Phone: 608-263-9283
Fax: 608-265-3233
E-mail:
Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs
University of Wisconsin - Madison
1225 Observatory Drive
Madison, WI 53706-1211
Karen Holden is Professor of Public Affairs and Consumer Science. She is co-director of the Center for Financial Security in the School of Human Ecology, and a Faculty Affiliate and Steering Committee member at the Center for the Health and Demography of Aging, and the Center for Demography and Ecology. 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. In 1986-87 she was a visiting economist at the Social Security Administration's Office of Research and Statistics.
Professor Holden's current projects include an examination of the adequacy of retirement savings and correlates of changes in adequacy over time. She also continues work on a comparative study of social security systems' treatment of widows and the difference that might make to economic outcomes. She served on the National Academy of Social Insurance Task Force that examined payout issues should there be individual social security accounts. The report, "Uncharted Waters: Paying Benefits from Individual Accounts in Federal Retirement Policy" is expected to inform the policy debate on Social Security reform. She received her B.A. degree in Economics from Barnard College and her doctorate in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.
Social Security and Reform: What it Does Now; Will it be Around to Keep Doing it? presentation slides, Oct. 11, 2005
Curriculum vitae
Courses
PA 871 Public Program Evaluation: fall 2007
PA 869 Workshop in
Public Affairs, Domestic Issues: spring 2007, spring 2008
La Follette School Working Paper Series
- The Sufficiency of Retirement Savings: A Comparison of Two Cohorts of Retired Workers at the Time of Retirement / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-019
- Gender Issues and Social Security Reform: Assessing the Role of Social Security and Personal Savings in Well-Being During Retirement / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2006-002
- Do Newly Retired Workers in the U.S. Have Sufficient Resources to Maintain Well-Being? / La Follette School Working Paper No. 2005-012