Debora Price

Pensions and poverty in later life

Financial services for an ageing society

Household money over the lifecourse

The financial consequences of cohabitation and separation

Survey methodology

Finance over the life course, especially pensions and poverty in late life, financial services for an ageing society, household money, and the financial consequences of cohabitation and separation.

Dr Debora Price, Gerontologist

Education:

PhD (Sociology), University of Surrey, 2005

MSc (Ageing and Social Research), University of Surrey, 2001

MA (Law) (conferred by right), Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge, 1988

Bar Finals, Inns of Court School of Law, 1986

BA (Hons)(Law), Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge, 1985

Biography

After qualifying as a barrister in the mid-80s Debora Price practised law in the Middle Temple, ultimately becoming a founding member of Coram Chambers, a set of barristers’ Chambers specialising in family law. She was drawn into academia by concern over possible increases in pensioner poverty as a result of rapid social changes in family life. Her PhD research focused on the impact of family change on pension scheme participation in the UK. She has subsequently been involved in analysis and commentary on UK pension reform and pensioner poverty.

Now a gerontologist and family sociologist, Debora is a currently a Senior Lecturer in Social Policy in Gerontology at the Institute of Gerontology in the Department for Social Science, Health and Medicine at King’s College London, where she convenes and teaches on Masters level modules on Population Ageing and Policy, Ageing in a Global Context, Quantitative Data Analysis and Data Manipulation & Management.

Debora’s research focuses on pensions and pension systems, poverty in later life, the sociology of money, social policy relating to finance over the lifecourse, financial services for an ageing population and the legal regulation of the financial consequences of parternship formation and dissolution. Her research centres mainly on gender and age in the study of inequalities, poverty and social exclusion and well-being in later life. Primarily a quantitative researcher, she also has an interest in survey methodology and data analysis, regularly undertaking consultancy work in this area.

She is currently co-investigator on a major cross-Research Council funded interdisciplinary consortium on Extending Working Lives under the Lifelong Health and Wellbeing programme, bringing together researchers from the Institute of Gerontology, the University of Toronto, University College London, Institute of Psychiatry and the Pensions Policy Institute. This collaborative project investigates how inequalities across the life course relate to paid work in later life in the UK.   Previous recent research projects include Grandparenting in Europe, a comparative study investigating the demographic and policy environments for grandparenting in ten European Countries, and an ESRC funded project entitled Behind Closed Doors: Older People and the Management of Household Money, which included a sociological investigation of household money management within older couples, quantitative analysis of financial inequalities among older couples using ELSA, and analysis of social policy relating to finance for later life.

Earlier research projects have included two projects funded by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission examining life course influences on poverty and inequality in old age, analysis of large datasets (the General Household Surveys and the Family Resources Surveys) to understand financial inequalities in pension accumulation relating to marital status and marital history in the population, inequalities in earnings among couples of working age, and secondary analysis of data generated by the Pensions Commission to understand the gendered impact of pension reform in the UK.

She has also undertaken consultancy research into the work of barristers in family law, and the impact of proposed changes to the legal aid system of funding for advocacy in family law cases, as well as a number of projects involving large-scale survey analysis of formal and informal complaints handling at the Bar of England and Wales, and the handling of complaints by the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education.