Henry Jacob Aaron (born 1936) is an American policy analyst and economist. He is the Bruce and Virginia MacLaury Senior Fellow in the Economic Studies Program at the

Brookings Institution The Brookings Institution, often stylized as simply Brookings, is an American research group founded in 1916. Located on Think Tank Row in Washington, D.C., the organization conducts research and education in the social sciences, primarily in e ...

, where he has been employed since 1968. He served as director of the program from 1990 through 1996. Aaron was nominated to the

Social Security Advisory Board The Social Security Advisory Board (SSAB) is an independent, bipartisan board of the United States federal government. It was created by Congress and is appointed by the President and the Congress to advise the President, the Congress, and the Comm ...

(SSAB) by President

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the ...

, receiving confirmation to the post by the

United States Senate The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and pow ...

in 2014. He served as chairman of the Board of the SSAB. He has been a proponent of a single-payer health care system, though he has questioned the feasibility of implementation in the United States.

Career

Aaron graduated from the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California S ...

and received a Ph.D. in economics from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

. From 1967 until 1989, in addition to his role at Brookings, Aaron taught at the

University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...

. From 1977 to 1978, he was Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the U.S.

Department of Health, Education, and Welfare The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is a cabinet-level executive branch department of the U.S. federal government created to protect the health of all Americans and providing essential human services. Its motto is ...

, and the next year, he chaired the Advisory Council on

Social Security Welfare, or commonly social welfare, is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specifical ...

. From 1996 to 1997, Aaron was a

Guggenheim Fellow Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the a ...

at the

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) is an interdisciplinary research lab at Stanford University that offers a residential postdoctoral fellowship program for scientists and scholars studying "the five core social and ...

at Stanford University. Aaron received the 2007 Robert M. Ball Award for Outstanding Achievements in Social Insurance. On September 8, 2014, Aaron's nomination by President

to be Chairman of the Social Security Advisory Board was confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 54–43. Aaron concluded that rationing of healthcare was necessary.

Affiliations

Aaron is a member of the Institute of Medicine, the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

and the advisory committee of the

Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research The Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) is a nonpartisan economic research institution housed at Stanford University. It was founded in 1982 as a way to bring together economic scholars from different parts of the University. ...

. He has been vice-president and member of the executive committee of the

American Economics Association The American Economic Association (AEA) is a learned society in the field of economics. It publishes several peer-reviewed journals acknowledged in business and academia. There are some 23,000 members. History and Constitution The AEA was esta ...

and president of the Association of Public Policy and Management. He has also served on the board of trustees of

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private research university in the Georgetown (Washington, D.C.), Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789 as Georg ...

and the board of directors of the College Retirement Equity Fund. He serves on the board of directors of the

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) is a progressive American think tank that analyzes the impact of federal and state government budget policies. A 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, the Center's stated mission is to "conduct resear ...

Publications

Aaron has written dozens of articles, which have been cited hundreds of times according to Google Scholar. Some of his publications with the highest citations include: * 1972: Shelter and subsidies, Brookings Institution. *1975: Who Pays the Property Tax? A New View. Studies of Government Finance Second Series.The Brookings Institution. *1983: Corporate taxation in the United States, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 1983 (2), 451–513. *1984: The painful prescription: rationing hospital care, WB Schwartz. *2010: Politics and the professors: The great society in perspective, Brookings Institution Press.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Aaron, Henry J. Health economists Members of the National Academy of Medicine Living people American economists 1936 births Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences University of California, Los Angeles alumni Center on Budget and Policy Priorities The Century Foundation Brookings Institution people