H. Allan Hunt, Ph.D.

Allan Hunt is a native of Wisconsin, educated at the University of Wisconsin, Lehigh University, and the University of California at Berkeley where he earned his Ph.D. in Economics in 1974. He has been employed at the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Kalamazoo, Michigan since 1978 and served in management at the Institute for 25 years before stepping down in 2007.

Dr. Hunt’s research career has involved him in the areas of disability compensation programs, disability prevention and management, employment and training policy, and the employment impacts of technological change. He has studied, consulted, and written about state and provincial workers’ compensation systems in Australia, Canada, and the United States.

Recently, Dr. Hunt led a team studying the incidence of total permanent disability pensions in the Washington state workers’ compensation system. Developmental work on compensation policies is continuing. In the past few years he chaired a Study Panel on Benefit Adequacy for the National Academy of Social Insurance, conducted a “Core Review” of workers’ compensation service delivery for the government of British Columbia, Canada and participated with the Office of Workers’ Compensation Policy in the U.S. Department of Labor on a study of the Federal Employees Compensation Act.

Before that he was selected by Westat, Inc. to serve as Co-Principal Investigator for the National Study of Health and Activity (nee the Disability Evaluation Study) for the Social Security Administration. He also directed the random sample study of Disability Prevention Among Michigan Employers.

Hunt has over 30 years of experience in workers’ disability compensation research and policy issues, and is the author or editor of nine books and numerous commissioned reports and published articles.