Johanna Torres Chain

Welcome to my website! I am a Ph.D. Candidate in Economics at the University of Minnesota.

I will be on the 2026–2027 academic job market.

My letter writers are Mariacristina De Nardi, Joseph Mullins, and Alessandra Fogli.

My research studies how health risks, family structure, and public programs shape household saving and labor supply over the life cycle. I focus on long-term care and the insurance provided by spouses and children, with particular attention to differences across marital status, race, and economic resources.

I combine structural life-cycle models with microdata to measure these mechanisms and evaluate social insurance policy.

During the 2025–2026 academic year, I was an NBER Graduate Fellow in the Economics of an Aging Workforce, supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.