Susan Chen received her B.A. in economics and chemistry from Cornell University, her M.S. in Agricultural Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and her Ph.D in Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is an assistant professor in the Agricultural Economics Department at Purdue University.

Dr. Chen is a health economist with a research agenda that focuses on topics in the economics of aging and the economics of nutrition. Her recently initiated research program in nutrition has focused on the economics of obesity where she has examined the relationship of the food landscape on health outcomes. In ongoing research she is now examining the relationship between income and healthy eating behavior.

Dr. Chen’s research in aging is focused on the early retirement behavior of prime aged individuals. Her current research interests are in theoretically modeling and estimating the effect of income support programs such as the Social Security Disability Insurance Program on household labor supply.

Dr. Chen is a core faculty member of the new field of Space Health and Population Economics (SHaPE) in the Agricultural Economics Department at Purdue. She teaches two graduate level classes in Health Economics and team teaches the SHaPE seminar.

Her personal website with links to publications and working papers can be found at http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~sechen/