I first met Dr. Fogel more than a dozen years ago when we shared a stage in Tokyo at a meeting of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Dr. Fogel reported that income in modern societies has shifted dramatically from basic needs to leisure, education and especially health care. He argued that increased use of health services have more than justified their costs. As he observed, “Most elderly Japanese would rather have a new knee than a new Toyota.”
For turning his scholarly research to the positive economics of longevity, Dr. Fogel was selected as the Indispensable Person of the Year in 2006, by our organization. He also served on the Alliance’s Science Advisory Board. He received the Nobel Prize for economics in 1993 and was director of the Center for Population Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Economics.
We will miss Dr. Fogel as an advisor and friend, and even more as a guiding intellectual light on our futures as aging people.
