Laura Katz Olson

Laura Katz Olson is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Lehigh University since 1974. She received her bachelor's degree from the City College of New York and her Ph.D. from the University of Colorado, Boulder. She has published widely in the field of aging, health care and women’s studies, her articles addressing social welfare policy, especially the problems of older women and long-term care.

To date, she has published nine academic books and two novels: Ethically Challenged: Private Equity Storms U.S. Health Care; Elder Care Journey: A View from the Front Lines; The Politics of Medicaid; The Handbook of Long-Term Care Administration and Policy; The Not So Golden Years: Caregiving, the Frail Elderly and the Long-Term Care Establishment; Age Through Ethnic Lenses: Caring for the Elderly in a Multicultural Society; The Graying of the World: Who Will Take Care of the Frail Elderly; Aging and Public Policy: The Politics of Growing Old in America; The Political Economy of Aging: The State, Private Power and Social Welfare; Heart Sounds; Wrinkled Rebels.

She has been a Scholar at the Social Security Administration, a Gerontological Fellow and a Fulbright Scholar. She also has lectured throughout Pennsylvania on Social Security, Medicare and Long-term Care policies, funded by the Pennsylvania Humanities Council. Olson has served as an elected member of the American Political Science Association Council and is on the editorial board of New Political Science.

In 2009, she received the Charles A. McCoy Lifetime Achievement Award from the New Political Science section of the American Political Science Association and, in 2012, Lehigh University’s Williamson Award in Social Research for her book The Politics of Medicaid.

Laura enjoys running, bicycling, kayaking, canoeing, playing the guitar and gardening. Her daughter, Alix Olson, is an assistant professor at Emery University-Oxford College and mother of her adored grandson, Zinn and granddaughter Gray. Laura lives with her husband George, a blue grass musician and luthier.

Wrinkled Rebels (Vine Leaves Press) will be published July 2024