Thomas Arnhold

Prae-Doc Researcher

Health, Ageing, and Health Systems Research Group

International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)

Email: arnhold@iiasa.ac.at

Hi! I am Thomas Arnhold, a quantitative researcher in the Health, Ageing, and Health Systems Research Group at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), and a PhD student at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU), supervised by Professor Marcel Bilger. I hold a master's degree in Economics (with honors) from the WU.

I am broadly interested in the intersection of social and economic inequality across the life course, with a particular focus on how these aspects affect health outcomes in later life. I follow an interdisciplinary approach, combining concepts from economics, sociology, and demography.

I am especially interested in how employment during working age shapes resilience to later life health shocks; how work-family trajectories contribute to gender inequalities in health; and how macro-level factors, such as social policy or gender attitudes, condition these relationships in comparative and international contexts.

News

June 26 I will be presenting the ongoing paper "Disentangling cohort changes in the cognitive gender gap", which is co-authored by Daniela Weber, Agneta Herlitz, and Valeria Bordone, at the European Population Conference 2026 in Bologna, June 4-6.
May 26 I was awarded the Vienna University of Economics and Business Need-Based Scholarship to participate at the Workshop New Data, Methods, and Theory: Lifecourse Cognitive Inequality at Yale University, New Haven, USA.
April 26 IIASA Working Paper titled "Retirement Effects on Cognitive Functioning: Exploring the Role of Gendered Employment Histories" out now. Read the full paper: https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/21490/
March 26 I presented my work on gendered employment histories and causal retirement effects on cognition at the REVES Conference in Tokyo, Japan and at the Ninth Austrian Health Economics Association Conference, in Vienna, Austria.
Jan 26 I was awarded the Dr. Ewald Novotny Scholarship from the Austrian National Bank (OeNB) supporting my attendance at REVES conference in Tokyo, March 11-14.
Dec 25 My co-authored paper with Viktoria Szenkurök and Daniela Weber has been published in the Vienna Yearbook of Population Research. We compare inequalities in cognitive and physical functioning across 41 countries. Click here to check it out.
May 25 I presented co-authored work with Daniela Weber and Valeria Bordone on the moderating role of European welfare regimes on the effect of work-family histories on cognitive functioning at the 36th REVES conference in Tampere, Finland.