The FINRA Investor Education Foundation recently awarded Olivia S. Mitchell, the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans Professor and a professor of insurance/risk management and business economics/public policy at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the 2019 Ketchum Prize—its highest honor (which comes with an award of $10,000)—for her extraordinary research on pensions and retirement income and her efforts worldwide to advance financial literacy. 

“For more than two decades, Dr. Mitchell has been at the forefront of research focused on retirement savings and planning. Her in-depth analyses of the intersection of public and private pensions, insurance and risk management, financial literacy, and public finance provide a clearer picture of Americans’ household finances and their ability to accumulate wealth over time,” said FINRA Foundation President Gerri Walsh.

“For most Americans, Social Security and employer-sponsored or individual retirement plans are the cornerstones of retirement, but an alarming number of Americans are financially unprepared for the retirement that awaits them. Dr. Mitchell’s research underscores the critical role that financial literacy plays in Americans’ financial decision-making and behaviors,” Ms. Walsh added.

Dr.  Mitchell is also executive director of the Pension Research Council and director of the Boettner Center for Pensions and Retirement Security, both at the Wharton School. Concurrently, Dr. Mitchell serves as a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and as a senior editor of the Journal of Pension Economics and Finance.

Dr. Mitchell is one of the world’s leading and most influential economists. Her research explores how systematic longevity risk and financial crises can shape household portfolios and work patterns over the life cycle, the economics and finance of defined contribution pensions, financial literacy and wealth accumulation, and claiming behavior for Social Security benefits.