As a health and inequality economist specializing in aging, caregiving and health-care disparities, these interests frame Mónika López-Anuarbe’s teaching, research and service at Connecticut College.

She teaches students how to address issues of access, costs and quality of healthcare for different populations, and how strategic behavior among individuals, firms and other economic agents affects those interdependent relationships. Keenly aware of how inequalities operate, she also uses her teaching and advising to minimize them. In class and in office hours, she constantly mentors and advises her students, working to diminish inequities of information, academic background, socioeconomic disadvantage, under-representation, and cultural unfamiliarity.

Her research focuses on inter- and intra-generational transfers of money and time: she studies how family members care for each other across and within generations, despite geographic distance. In particular, she is interested in better understanding the mechanisms, incentives, and obstacles of family inter vivos transfers (money given to someone when alive instead of bequests), remittances (transfers sent and received from abroad), and informal (unpaid) caregiving to aging relatives and friends. Do these transfers alleviate or exacerbate social inequality? Can we sustain a steady stream of family caregivers with the existing set of public and private mechanisms? How can we better care for our caregivers? She utilizes quantitative and qualitative methods to study national and local primary and secondary datasets.

López-Anuarbe is committed to conducting both national and local studies. Research related to New London and to Connecticut combines her teaching, research and service talents. She finds it especially rewarding and pedagogically meaningful to conduct research with students that directly benefits local communities. She serves her students, colleagues, and the broader communities both publicly (via committee and task force appointments or elections) and discretely, without any type of recognition.

In these types of projects, she combines her teaching, research, and service skills such that the frontiers of these three areas blur. She thoroughly enjoys this work and look forward to devoting many more years to her profession and to Connecticut College

López-Anuarbe is the recipient of the 2017 Helen Mulvey Faculty Award for Fostering Student Achievement.

Visit the economics department website.

Majoring in Economics.

Monika Lopez Anuarbe Curriculum Vitae (pdf)