Caroline Welter
Incoming Assistant Professor of Economics at Skidmore College .
About Me
I am an economist specializing in Health Economics and Urban and Regional Economics. My research studies how place and policy design shape access to public programs, health care, and economic opportunity.
I received my Ph.D. in Economics from West Virginia University and will join Skidmore College as an Assistant Professor of Economics in Fall 2026. My work uses causal inference methods with administrative, spatial, and survey data to examine distributional effects across rural, low-income, and digitally underserved populations.
My current research focuses on disability program access, telehealth, health care delivery, and regional economic inequality.
Featured Job Market Paper
The Impact of SSA Field Office Closures on Disability Program Participation
This paper studies how the nationwide closure of Social Security Administration field offices during the COVID-19 pandemic affected participation in disability benefit programs. I exploit these closures as a natural experiment using a difference-in-differences design.
I find that closures reduced new disability beneficiaries by 2.3% overall, with larger declines in non-metropolitan areas (-9.4%) and low-internet communities (-6.65%). These results show that in-person administrative access remains important for vulnerable populations, even as public agencies expand remote service delivery.