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Researcher Spotlight

James P. Smith

Senior Economist

James P. Smith holds the RAND Chair in Labor Markets and Demographic Studies and was Director of RAND's Labor and Population Studies Program from 1977-1994. He received his Ph.D in economics from the University of Chicago.

Jim Smith has made many important contributions to science. He has published extensively on the economic history of African-Americans in the United States, the role of women in the labor market, economic loss in wrongful death cases, economic development and labor markets, the economic, demographic and health effects of immigration, and the assimilation of immigrants across generations.

With a career spanning more than 30 years, Smith is among the most cited economists in the world. He has published many widely cited studies on the dual relation between health outcomes and economic status that span topics including the impacts of health on financial outcomes of families, the SES health gradient and its underlying causes, and the role of childhood health in latter life economic and health outcomes. His recent work has concentrated on the economics of aging around the world, including incentives for wealth accumulation and savings behavior, housing upsizing and downsizing, bequests and their distribution, and the use of vignettes in subjective health scales.

Smith has been a leader in efforts to establish international studies and new surveys on population aging around the world that for the first time integrate economics and health. He was the lead author of the report that recommended the start of the Health and Retirement Survey in the United States, a study now replicated in over twenty-five countries around the world. He is the head of the international advisory committee for health and retirement aging studies in the Unites States, China, India, Ireland and England.

Smith has received numerous academic awards and honors. He is a fellow of the Society of Labor Economics and delivered the Inaugural Albert Rees Lecture at that society's annual meetings in 2004. He is a member of Who's Who in America and Who's Who in Economics, and is a two time recipient of a National Institutes of Health MERIT Award, the highest award NIH gives to a researcher. He recently received the 2009 Ulysses Medal from University College Dublin, an award given to "individuals whose work has made an outstanding global contribution."

Smith is a dual citizen of the United States and Ireland. He lives in California and is married to Sandra Berry and has two daughters, Gillian and Lauren.

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