Nicole Maestas is associate professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School; research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); and director of NBER’s Retirement and Disability Research Center. She studies how the health and disability insurance systems affect individual economic behaviors, such as labor supply and the consumption of medical care. Maestas’s work has shown that the federal disability insurance system discourages employment by people with disabilities. She is also examining how population aging affects economic growth and how working conditions affect individuals’ ability and desire to sustain employment at older ages. In addition, she is investigating the causes of the opioid epidemic and its impact on employment and participation in the federal disability programs, as well as the effects of state Medicaid policies on the health care and well-being of people receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits.
