I was really saddened to learn this week of the passing of Professor Dame Peggy Koopman-Boyden. Peggy was a long-term collaborator of mine, as I noted in this post from 2017, on the occasion of her being made a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit.
As I noted in that 2017 post, Peggy and I may have collaborated a lot, going back to 2006, but we only published one research paper together - this 2015 working paper entitled "Labour Force Participation, Human Capital and Wellbeing among Older New Zealanders" (co-authored with Matthew Roskruge at Massey University). I won't reiterate my other comments from that 2017 post. However, in recent years, Peggy and I served together on the governance board of the Institute of Healthy Ageing, a collaboration between the University of Waikato, Health New Zealand, and other organisations.
Peggy made a number of contributions to the community as well as to academia. This Waikato Times article provides a great overview. Peggy continued to contribute widely until relatively recently, when poor health started to intervene.
I saw Peggy only a few times over the past couple of years. I'll most remember her for her ready smile, her keen intelligence and wisdom, and her frequent witty remarks. I'll miss those moments when she would ask what I had been working on, and then quip that I spent too much of my time on research that was unrelated to population ageing. It is somewhat fitting then, that the presentation I will be making at the European Regional Science Association conference tomorrow is on subnational population ageing (in Australia).
Peggy is a great loss to the New Zealand community. I am very surprised that, as yet, there are no obituaries of her online. She will be greatly missed.
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