Yung-Ping Chen, PhD
Graduate faculty; Senior Fellow, Gerontology Institute
bing.chen@umb.edu
(617) 287-7326
Office: Third floor, Wheatley, Room 104
Curriculum Vitae

For more information on our graduate programs, contact: gerontology@umb.edu

Yung-Ping (Bing) Chen, PhD, is a professor of Gerontology and has held the Frank J. Manning Eminent Scholar's Chair at UMass Boston since 1988. He teaches Economic Issues in Aging Populations, a required course in the Ph.D. program in Gerontology, and Economic Security of the Aged, an elective. For many years he taught at UCLA, where he received a Warren C. Scoville Distinguished Teaching Award (Economics).

Professor Chen's research is concentrated in five interrelated areas in retirement security: Financing and benefit structure of Social Security, differential pension coverage for black and Hispanic workers, concept of and problems with reverse mortgages, a new model for funding long-term care, and concept of and barriers to phased retirement.

Professor Chen has been active in policy development. He has been a delegate to four consecutive White House Conferences on Aging (1971, 1981, 1995, and 2005) and the 1998 White House Conference on Social Security. He served on the expert panel of the 1979 Advisory Council on Social Security. He has also frequently testified before Congressional committees.

Professor Chen is a fellow in the Gerontological Society of America (a past chair of the economics of aging interest group and founding editor of its newsletter), a founding member of the National Academy of Social Insurance, a member of Sigma Phi Omega (national honor society in gerontology), as well as Omicron Delta Epsilon (international honor society in economics). Serving on the editorial board of Aging Today and of the Journal on Social Security, Pensions and Retirement Income, he has lectured at several universities in Asia and Europe.

Born and raised in China and a graduate of National Taiwan University, Professor Chen earned his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in economics at the University of Washington, Seattle, Washington. He started as a law student in China and he passed the Chinese national civil service examination for diplomatic and consular services. He also attended the master's degree program in mental health sciences at Hahnemann University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.