Congratulations to Asal Pilehvari for her policy proposal which has been qualified to be recognized with the designation "with distinction" from the 2019 Hoover Institution Summer Policy Boot Camp (HISPBC) at Stanford University.  HISPBC is an intensive, one-week residential immersion program in the essentials of today's national and international United States policy.  The program aims to train students and recent graduates on the economics, political and social aspects of United States public policy.  HISPBC is inteded to foster fact-based critical thinking on the most important policy issues and their immediate relevance to the current and future challenges in the United States.
Here is a brief summary of Asal's proposal:
"In the U.S., by 2020, there will be more Americans over the age of 65 than under 15 years old, causing deep social and political transformations, and challengeing society in many aspects.  The continuing reduction in ratios of workers to retirees causes serious concerns about Social Security benefit sustainability and increases burdens to medical care and pensions systems.  In particular, Social Security paid out more benefits than it collected in taxes in 2018 and recent predictions by Social Security Adminstration shows the trust will be depleated by 2034.  These concerns prompt a series of retirement-related policies, such as increasing full retirement age.  The effectiveness of this type of policies depends on an implicit assumption that delaying retirement is good for health or at least does not harm health.  Therefore, the precise quantitative identification of possible retirement impact on elderly's health along with unravelling the mechanism through which retirement impacts health is of significant relevance for policy implementation and evaluation.  In this study, we examine the overall effect of retirement on health and introdcue social network as a potential mediation factor in this relationship.  Findings confirm the important role of social network in the relationship between retirement and health, implying that social network is an effective policy instrument for promoting elderly's health.  Policy interventions that target promoting different aspects of elderly's social capital buildup are promising tools for improving elderly's health."