IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jpolec/doi10.1086-736207.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Disability Insurance: Error Rates and Gender Differences

Author

Listed:
  • Hamish Low
  • Luigi Pistaferri

Abstract

We show the extent of screening errors made in disability insurance awards using matched survey-administrative data. False rejections are widespread, with large gender differences. Work-disabled women are 12.8 percentage points more likely to be rejected than work-disabled men, controlling for health conditions, occupation, and demographics. Gender differences arise because women are assessed with more residual work capacity. We model the Social Security Administration (SSA) decision-making process and estimate that gender differences in screening errors originate from lower costs to the SSA from incorrectly rejecting women. Noise in self-reported work limitation leads to overstating screening errors, but the gender difference remains.

Suggested Citation

  • Hamish Low & Luigi Pistaferri, 2025. "Disability Insurance: Error Rates and Gender Differences," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 133(9), pages 2962-3018.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jpolec:doi:10.1086/736207
    DOI: 10.1086/736207
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/736207
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/736207
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/736207?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

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:ucp:jpolec:doi:10.1086/736207. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JPE .

    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.