Dr. Yu-Chih Chen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Work at National Taiwan University (NTU). His research focuses on the social determinants of healthy aging (e.g., economic, neighborhood, and social engagement), productive engagement (e.g., employment, volunteering, and caregiving), financial capability, and cross-national comparative research. He is currently leading multiple projects, including studies on how self-employment in later life affects health (China), how social isolation shapes cognition and frailty (US, UK, South Korea, and China), and the impacts of financial capability (US).

Dr. Chen has received funding from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council, the Social Policy Institute at Washington University in St. Louis, Taiwan’s Ministry of Education, and Taiwan’s Ministry of Health and Welfare. His work has been published in leading journals in gerontology and the social sciences, including Innovation in Aging, The Journals of Gerontology: Social Sciences, The Gerontologist, International Journal of Health Policy and Management, and Social Science & Medicine. In 2025, he received the Ministry of Education’s Yushan Young Scholar Award and was named an NTU Eminent Scholar (a NTU professorship).

Dr. Chen is actively engaged in several academic communities. He currently serves as an Associate Editor of Aging & Mental Health and as an editorial board member of the Journal of Gerontological Social Work, and he is also an Academic Editor for PLoS One. In addition, he has served as an anonymous reviewer for 39 journals and reviewed more than 100+ manuscripts.

Dr. Chen’s practice interests center on the health of older adults in community and long-term care settings. His research draws on large-scale social and administrative data, as well as primary data collection, and applies rigorous quantitative methods to evaluate how social determinants shape healthy aging. Before joining National Taiwan University, he served as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Work and Social Administration at the University of Hong Kong. Dr. Chen earned both his BSW and MSW degrees in Social Work from National Taiwan University. In 2011, he was awarded a Ministry of Education government fellowship to pursue doctoral study in the United States (with a focus on economic security in later life). He subsequently completed his PhD in Social Work at the Brown School, Washington University in St. Louis, and was named a McDonnell International Scholar at Washington University.