Eric Bonsang, who received his Ph.D. in economics from ULg in 2008, loves numbers. His dissertation (Essays on Health and Family Economics), in which he develops the data of the SHARE Survey concerning people 50 years old and older in Europe, is a collection of statistics that measure with mathematical rigor the extent and the nature of informal aid given to elderly persons, the effects of substitution between formal and informal forms of aid, and the effects of ageing and retirement on cognitive capacities.

Bonsang received his Master’s degree in economic sciences from ULG in 2001. He has worked for the National Institute of Statistics, and worked as an assistant researcher at the Centre for Research on Public Economics and Population (CREPP) at ULg before seeking a Master’s degree in economics at the KUL (2003), and finishing his doctoral dissertation at ULg. In January 2009 he will begin post-doctoral work at the Centre for Research in Education and the Labour Market (ROA, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration) at the University of Maastricht.

Selection of publications

BONSANG E., How do middle-aged children allocate time and money transfers to their older parents in Europe?, Empirica, 34, 2, pp 171-188, 2007.

BONSANG E., ADAM S., GERMAIN S., PERELMAN S., Retraite, activités non professionnelles et vieillissement cognitif. Une exploration à partir des données de Share, Economie et Statistique, 303-304, pp 83-96, 2007.

BONSANG E., Does informal care from children to their elderly parents substitute for formal care in Europe?, Journal of Health Economics, doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2008.09.002, 2008 (forthcoming).

BONSANG E., PERELMAN S., VAN DEN BOSCH K., Income, consumption and wealth inequality, in Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe – First Results from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (edited by Axel Börsch-Supan, Agar Brugiavini, Hendrik Jürges, Johan Mackenbach, Johannes Siegrist, and Guglielmo Weber), Mannheim: MEA, 2005.

BONSANG E., GERMAIN S., ADAM S., BAY C., PERELMAN S., Occupational activities and cognitive reserve: a frontier approach applied to the Survey on Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), CREPP working papers 2006/05, HEC-ULg, 2006.

BONSANG E., GERMAIN S., ADAM S., BAY C., PERELMAN S., Retirement and cognitive reserve: a stochastic frontier approach applied to survey data, CREPP working papers 2007/04, HEC-ULg, 2007.