Mary Elizabeth (Beth) Soldo, former Joseph E. and Ruth E. Boettner Professor of Financial Gerontology and director of the Boettner Center of Financial Gerontology, died May 28 after a long illness. She was 71. 

Dr. Soldo earned a BA in sociology from Fordham University in 1970 and an MA and a PhD in sociology/demography from Duke University in 1973 and 1977, respectively. Dr. Soldo served as assistant director of the Center for Demographic Studies at Duke (now the Duke Population Research Center) for three years before becoming a senior research fellow at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University. Dr. Soldo was a full professor in the department of demography at Georgetown and served as chair of the department for nine years.

In 1999, Dr. Soldo joined the staff at the University of Pennsylvania, and in 2000 she was named the first Joseph E. and Ruth E. Boettner Professor of Financial Gerontology and director of the Boettner Center of Financial Gerontology in the School of Social Work (Almanac January 18, 2000). She was also a professor of sociology at Penn, a research associate in the Population Studies Center and director of the Center’s Population Aging Research Center, and a senior fellow of the Pension Research Council in Wharton. She retired in 2017.

She published hundreds of papers and chapters, co-authored or co-edited several books and received many million-dollar research grants, including grants from the National Institute on Aging (NIA). Dr. Soldo was instrumental in the development of the Health and Retirement Study and was the principal investigator of the Mexican Health Study, the largest NIH grant to a woman principal investigator at the time at $7 million. She testified to Congress numerous times concerning public policy issues and demography and served as a consultant to government agencies, including Social Security, Medicare and NIH. 

Dr. Soldo is survived by her husband, Peter Bridge; sister, Linda Soldo; and many family members, including cousins Paul and Paula Santa-Donato. A memorial service will be held at a later date. 

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