Scitovsky was born in
Ludwigshafen, Germany, on April 17, 1915, and emigrated to the United States when she was 15 with her family. She earned her bachelor's degree from
Barnard College in 1937 and master's degree from
Columbia University in 1941. During World War II, she worked at the
Social Security Administration with
Selma Mushkin, an early pioneer in the field of health economics. During the 1950s and 60s, she was a homemaker and spent time raising her daughter. In 1963, Scitovsky was invited to join the
Palo Alto Medical Foundation to develop a program on health economics. She remained with the institute for the next 30 years. She also published studies showing that demand for healthcare is influenced by what people have to pay for it long before the
RAND Corporation launched its health insurance study. In 1979, Scitovsky was appointed by
Jimmy Carter as one of the 11 members of the
President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research. In 1980, Scitovsky was elected a member of the
Institute Of Medicine of the
National Academy of Sciences. == Personal life ==