~ A Message from the Center's Executive Director

The Center works in partnership with over 32 women's and aging organizations, which have a combined membership of over 10 million women. Our work is supported by the federal government and a number of foundations, as well as individual and corporate donors.

In 1997-98, much of the Center's work focused on our nationwide study on how women plan for their financial futures. Five hundred women between the ages of 50 and 79 participated in an in-depth telephone interview about their experiences with financial planning, asset building, pensions, and ways of seeking advice on financial matters. The goal of the study was to add to the limited body of information on business, policy, and personal planning required to ensure women are not financially disadvantaged as they age. James H. Schulz, the Ida and Meyer Kirstein Professor for Planning and Administration of Aging Policy at Brandeis University, headed the project.   Results were announced at a conference in Washington DC, and a report is also available.

We were involved with a number of projects from 1999-2003, including research in collaboration with the National Alliance for Caregiving (NAC) to examine the opportunity costs of caregiving among midlife and older women, the on-going POWERCenter (Program on Women's Education for Retirement) in collaboration with WISER (Women's Institute for a Secure Retirement), and a secondary research project using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Mature Women, where we analyzed the impact of raising the age of eligibility for Medicare on women close to retirement age.

Each year at the Center continues to be busy and productive.  Along with our research, we continue to seek additional funds to underwrite our newsletter, our publications, and new research activities.  We periodically issue press releases to publicize our activities and to focus national attention on the concerns of midlife and older women.

If you have suggestions for or comments about the Center's mission or activities, please get in touch with us. We want to hear from you.
 

About Our Director

Phyllis H. Mutschler, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Center and an Associate Research Professor at Brandeis University's Heller School for Social Policy and Management.  In 1992, she was named a Brookdale National Fellow, an award by the Brookdale Foundation to persons who show most promise for leadership in gerontology.

Dr. Mutschler is an authority on the economic status of older women, issues related to caregiving, and the early retirement trend. She currently is conducting a study of older women to identify factors that critically affect their well-being at older ages and, at the National Bureau of Economic Research, is investigating the impact of private pension plan provisions and special early retirement incentive plans on employees' retirement decisions. She continues to study the effect of caregiving responsibilities on 'working caregivers' and has collaborated with the Washington Business Group and business coalitions across the nation to help support workers having family caregiving responsibilities.