The Schaeffer Center’s Health Policy Simulation program moves findings from economic modeling into programs, practices and policies.
For more than a decade, the Schaeffer Center has been developing economic models to answer salient policy questions about aging in the United States. Experts elevate aging policy discussions in two areas of emphasis: finding policies to mitigate the social consequences of health disparities, and assessing international lessons for U.S. aging policy.
The program’s centerpiece effort is the Future Elderly Model (FEM), an economic-demographic microsimulation led by faculty at the University of Southern California, with collaborators from Columbia University, Harvard University, Stanford University, RAND Corporation, the University of Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania. FEM is used to explore a variety of policy questions and has produced more than 50 peer-reviewed publications, including clusters of research highlighted in special issues of Health Affairs and Health Economics. FEM findings have been relied on by several government agencies, the White House and Congress as well as by private organizations interested in aging policy.
The health policy simulation program was funded by the NIH under a prestigious Roybal Center grant through 2019.