Cardiovascular disease at play in growing rural-urban divide in life expectancy among U.S. counties

Rural town

While life expectancy (LE) in the U.S was was on the rise in the first decade of the 2000s (more so in urban counties than in rural), the last decade showed a drop in LE in rural counties and only modest gains in urban areas. Our Sloan Fellow on Aging and Work Leah Abrams, PhD, is the lead author on a study published in the International Journal of Epidemiology that takes…

The best-laid plans for retirement…

Head shot of Leah Abrams

Harvard Sloan Fellow on Aging and Work Leah Abrams, PhD, recently published one of her dissertation papers in the journal Ageing & Society that found that among a cohort of Americans ages 51 – 61, it is common to have unmet expectations about retirement timing (e.g. working a shorter or longer time period than expected). “… policies that aim to incentivize longer work are limited by the fact that many…