IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/itaxpf/v7y2000i4p521-546.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Impact of Taxing Unemployment Insurance Benefits on Unemployment Duration and Post-unemployment Earnings

Author

Listed:
  • Chul-In Lee

Abstract

In 1979, unemployment insurance benefits became taxableincome for recipients with income above a specified threshold.Further legislation in 1982 lowered the income threshold. Thispaper uses the Continuous Wage and Benefit History (CWBH) database to evaluate the effects of the 1982 change on the compensatedduration of unemployment and post-unemployment earnings. The1982 episode is a particularly useful “natural experiment”because the “treatment group” (those newly subject to benefittaxation) is the middle income category and the two “controlgroups” (those whose benefits were already taxed and those whosebenefits still were not taxed) are the high and low income categories.If the two control groups show similar trends in unemploymentduration (or post-unemployment earnings) and the treatment groupshows a strikingly different pattern, this is compelling evidenceof a tax effect. The empirical results suggest that taxing unemploymentbenefits reduced the affected workers' mean compensated durationby more than a week, but did not have a statistically significanteffect on their post-unemployment earnings. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2000

Suggested Citation

  • Chul-In Lee, 2000. "The Impact of Taxing Unemployment Insurance Benefits on Unemployment Duration and Post-unemployment Earnings," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 7(4), pages 521-546, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:itaxpf:v:7:y:2000:i:4:p:521-546
    DOI: 10.1023/A:1008741607468
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1023/A:1008741607468
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1023/A:1008741607468?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dale T. Mortensen, 1977. "Unemployment Insurance and Job Search Decisions," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 30(4), pages 505-517, July.
    2. Woodbury, Stephen A & Spiegelman, Robert G, 1987. "Bonuses to Workers and Employers to Reduce Unemployment: Randomized Trials in Illinois," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(4), pages 513-530, September.
    3. Solon, Gary R, 1985. "Work Incentive Effects of Taxing Unemployment Benefits," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(2), pages 295-306, March.
    4. Katz, Lawrence F. & Meyer, Bruce D., 1990. "The impact of the potential duration of unemployment benefits on the duration of unemployment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 45-72, February.
    5. Moffitt, Robert, 1985. "Unemployment insurance and the distribution of unemployment spells," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 85-101, April.
    6. Moffitt, Robert & Nicholson, Walter, 1982. "The Effect of Unemployment Insurance on Unemployment: The Case of Federal Supplemental Benefits," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 64(1), pages 1-11, February.
    7. Heckman, James & Singer, Burton, 1984. "A Method for Minimizing the Impact of Distributional Assumptions in Econometric Models for Duration Data," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(2), pages 271-320, March.
    8. Meyer, Bruce D, 1990. "Unemployment Insurance and Unemployment Spells," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(4), pages 757-782, July.
    9. Card, David & Levine, Phillip B., 2000. "Extended benefits and the duration of UI spells: evidence from the New Jersey extended benefit program," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(1-2), pages 107-138, October.
    10. Ehrenberg, Ronald G & Oaxaca, Ronald L, 1976. "Unemployment Insurance, Duration of Unemployment, and Subsequent Wage Gain," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 66(5), pages 754-766, December.
    11. Han, Aaron & Hausman, Jerry A, 1990. "Flexible Parametric Estimation of Duration and Competing Risk Models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 5(1), pages 1-28, January-M.
    12. Lancaster, Tony, 1985. "Generalised residuals and heterogeneous duration models : With applications to the Weilbull model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 155-169, April.
    13. Gruber, Jonathan, 1997. "The Consumption Smoothing Benefits of Unemployment Insurance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(1), pages 192-205, March.
    14. Lippman, Steven A & McCall, John J, 1976. "The Economics of Job Search: A Survey," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 14(3), pages 347-368, September.
    15. Burdett, Kenneth, 1979. "Unemployment Insurance Payments as a Search Subsidy: A Theoretical Analysis," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 17(3), pages 333-343, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ott Toomet, 2005. "Does an increase in unemployment income lead to longer unemployment spells? Evidence using Danish unemployment assistance data," Economics Working Papers 2005-07, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    2. Ott-Siim Toomet, 2005. "Does an Increase in Unemployment Income Lead to Longer Unemployment Spells? Evidence Using Danish Unemployment Assistance Data," Bank of Estonia Working Papers 2005-09, Bank of Estonia, revised 10 Oct 2005.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Krueger, Alan B. & Meyer, Bruce D., 2002. "Labor supply effects of social insurance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 33, pages 2327-2392, Elsevier.
    2. Bruce D. Meyer & Wallace K. C. Mok, 2007. "Quasi-Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Unemployment Insurance from New York State," NBER Working Papers 12865, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Lalive, Rafael & Zweimuller, Josef, 2004. "Benefit entitlement and unemployment duration: The role of policy endogeneity," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(12), pages 2587-2616, December.
    4. Carl Davidson & Stephen A. Woodbury, 1996. "Unemployment Insurance and Unemployment Implications of the Reemployment Bonus Experiments," Book chapters authored by Upjohn Institute researchers, in: Advisory Council on Unemployment Compensation: Background Papers, volume 3, pages KK1-KK37, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
    5. Rafael Lalive & Jan Van Ours & Josef Zweimuller, 2006. "How Changes in Financial Incentives Affect the Duration of Unemployment," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(4), pages 1009-1038.
    6. Lars Pico Geerdsen & Stéphanie Vincent Lyk-Jensen & Cecilie Dohlmann Weatherall, 2018. "Accelerating the transition to employment at benefit exhaustion: still possible after four years of unemployment?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 54(3), pages 1107-1135, May.
    7. Simoes, Nadia, 2013. "Subsídio de desemprego: uma revisão da literatura teórica e empírica [Unemployment insurance: a survey]," MPRA Paper 52332, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Brigitte Dormont & Denis Fougère & Ana Prieto, 2001. "L'effet de l'allocation unique dégressive sur la reprise d'emploi," Économie et Statistique, Programme National Persée, vol. 343(1), pages 3-28.
    9. Guler, Bulent & Taskin, Temel, 2013. "Does unemployment insurance crowd out home production?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 1-16.
    10. Nakajima, Makoto, 2012. "A quantitative analysis of unemployment benefit extensions," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(7), pages 686-702.
    11. Konstantinos Tatsiramos, 2009. "Unemployment Insurance in Europe: Unemployment Duration and Subsequent Employment Stability," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(6), pages 1225-1260, December.
    12. Konstantinos Tatsiramos & Jan C. Ours, 2014. "Labor Market Effects Of Unemployment Insurance Design," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(2), pages 284-311, April.
    13. Johannes F. Schmieder & Till von Wachter, 2016. "The Effects of Unemployment Insurance Benefits: New Evidence and Interpretation," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 8(1), pages 547-581, October.
    14. Card, David & Levine, Phillip B., 2000. "Extended benefits and the duration of UI spells: evidence from the New Jersey extended benefit program," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(1-2), pages 107-138, October.
    15. Beata Bieszk-Stolorz & Iwona Markowicz, 2015. "Influence Of Unemployment Benefit On Duration Of Registered Unemployment Spells," Equilibrium. Quarterly Journal of Economics and Economic Policy, Institute of Economic Research, vol. 10(3), pages 167-183, September.
    16. Dan A. Black & Mark C. Berger & Jeffrey A. Smith & Brett J. Noel, 1999. "Is the Threat of Training More Effective Than Training Itself? Experimental Evidence from the UI System," University of Western Ontario, Departmental Research Report Series 9907, University of Western Ontario, Department of Economics.
    17. Vijlbrief, J.A., 1990. "The effects of unemployment insurance on the labour market," Serie Research Memoranda 0031, VU University Amsterdam, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Econometrics.
    18. Elif S. Filiz, 2017. "The Effect of Unemployment Insurance Generosity on Unemployment Duration and Labor Market Transitions," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 31(4), pages 369-393, December.
    19. Min Zhang, 2010. "Unemployment Insurance Eligibility, Moral Hazard and Equilibrium Unemployment," Working Papers tecipa-405, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    20. Walter Nicholson & Karen Needels, "undated". "The EUC08 Program in Theoretical and Historical Perspective," Mathematica Policy Research Reports 9046cb11c3aa44c8a036a6e38, Mathematica Policy Research.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:itaxpf:v:7:y:2000:i:4:p:521-546. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.