Seth Sanders

Ronald G. Ehrenberg Chair, Professor of Economics Link

Faculty Affiliate, Center for Aging and Policy Studies

CAPS Biography:

As an economist who studies the long-term impacts of early-life conditions, my research closely aligns with CAPS signature theme of health and well-being, and all three cross-cutting themes of policy, place, and specific populations. I have been interested in substantive and methodological topics in aging research and building a data infrastructure that helps to model aging over the life course. I have many years of experience with data matching and research using matched data.  

As part of a research team, I was responsible for developing matching methods that the U.S. Census Bureau used to obtain high and accurate Protected Identification Key (PIK) rates for the 1940 Census. These data have been linked to modern data to allow us to study life course outcomes. My recent work funded by NICHD uses matched data to investigate the long-term implications of the Great Migration on African American health and mortality. In this project, we constructed two unique data sets, one a match between Medicare records and Social Security Administration Numerical Identification System (SSA NUMIDENT) records and another between the original cohorts of the National Longitudinal Survey and both Medicare records and vital statistics records. In both cases, the town or county of birth from the NUMIDENT was codified; we developed algorithms that mapped these handwritten responses to United States Geographical Survey (USGS) codes for 94% of individuals in our datasets. I have published a paper that used credit score data matched to the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Study to study cardiovascular health. I have been keenly involved with measurement issues of mortality. Finally, in a project funded by NIA, I have studied the use of item response time on surveys to measure cognition and cognitive decline in surveys.