Dora L. Costa is Kenneth T. Sokoloff Professor of Economic History at UCLA's Economics Department where she teaches economic history. She is a research associate in the National Bureau of Economic Research's (NBER) programs on the Development of the American Economy and on Aging, was department chair from 2017 to 2021, and the director of the NBER working group Cohort Studies from 2000 to 2025. She received her B.A. in economics and mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1986 and her Phd in economics from the University of Chicago in 1993 and joined MIT in 1993. She joined UCLA in 2007. She spent 1995-1996 at the National Bureau of Economic Research as an Aging Fellow, 1999-2000 at the Russell Sage Foundation as a visiting scholar, and 2003-2004 at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral and Social Sciences as a fellow. She has received several NIH grants. Costa's research focuses primarily on issues in labor economics, demography, and health, as interpreted over the long span of American economic history. Her work has covered a wide range of topics including: retirement, elderly living arrangements, determinants of older age mortality and morbidity, long-term trends in the health of the population, trends in leisure, CPI bias, and social capital. Most of her research contrasts and compares the past with the present and examines why cross-sectional relations have been changing to better inform our understanding of the future. She is the author of numerous articles, several major data releases, and two books, "The Evolution of Retirement: An American Economic History 1880-1990" (University of Chicago Press for NBER 1998) and " Cowards and Heroes: The Social Face of War" (Princeton University Press for NBER 2008). . She currently is pursuing two lines of research. One is an investigation of long-term trends in health inequality by social class at all stages of the life cycle and of the effect of childhood health on morbidity and economic outcomes at older ages. The other line of study is on the intergenerational and transgenerational transmission of health and socioeconomic status, including epigenetic transmission. Costa enjoys food, frisbee, National Parks, and week-ends at the office. She is a married to Matthew Kahn, a professor at USC's Economics Department. They both remain research assistants to their son.

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