IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mrr/papers/wp297.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Social Security Benefit Claiming and Medicare Utilization

Author

Listed:
  • John Bound

    (University of Michigan)

  • Helen Levy

    (University of Michigan)

  • Lauren Hersch Nicholas

    (Johns Hopkins University and University of Michigan)

Abstract

Are early Social Security claimers too sick to work? We linked Health and Retirement Study data to Medicare claims to study health care utilization at ages 65 and 70. We find that Social Security Disability Insurance recipients use more health care on average than those who never received DI. At age 65, Medicare spending on SSDI recipients was $4,440 more than spending on retirees who claimed Social Security benefits prior to Full Retirement Age (FRA) and $4,727 more than those claiming at FRA. Differences in Medicare spending persist at all points of the spending distribution. They are robust to a variety of methodological approaches including general linear models, quantile regression, and reweighting, and in specifications limiting comparisons to beneficiaries claiming benefits at initial EEA. Our results suggest that poor health may contribute to EEA claiming decisions, though this group is considerably healthier than those who were too disabled to work and qualified for DI benefits.

Suggested Citation

  • John Bound & Helen Levy & Lauren Hersch Nicholas, 2013. "Social Security Benefit Claiming and Medicare Utilization," Working Papers wp297, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    • Handle: RePEc:mrr:papers:wp297
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://mrdrc.isr.umich.edu/publications/Papers/pdf/wp297.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Congressional Budget Office, 2012. "Raising the Ages of Eligibility for Medicare and Social Security," Reports 42683, Congressional Budget Office.
    2. DiNardo, John & Fortin, Nicole M & Lemieux, Thomas, 1996. "Labor Market Institutions and the Distribution of Wages, 1973-1992: A Semiparametric Approach," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(5), pages 1001-1044, September.
    3. David Card & Carlos Dobkin & Nicole Maestas, 2008. "The Impact of Nearly Universal Insurance Coverage on Health Care Utilization: Evidence from Medicare," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(5), pages 2242-2258, December.
    4. Congressional Budget Office, 2012. "Raising the Ages of Eligibility for Medicare and Social Security," Reports 42683, Congressional Budget Office.
    5. Manning, Willard G. & Mullahy, John, 2001. "Estimating log models: to transform or not to transform?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 461-494, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Silvia Helena Barcellos & Mireille Jacobson, 2015. "The Effects of Medicare on Medical Expenditure Risk and Financial Strain," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 7(4), pages 41-70, November.
    2. de Meijer, Claudine & O’Donnell, Owen & Koopmanschap, Marc & van Doorslaer, Eddy, 2013. "Health expenditure growth: Looking beyond the average through decomposition of the full distribution," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 88-105.
    3. Liu, Xiaohe & Fang, Lan & You, Hongye, 2007. "Agriculture Trade Liberalization and Poverty in China: Linked CGE Model Analysis," Conference papers 331628, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    4. Sandra L. Decker & Jalpa A. Doshi & Amy E. Knaup & Daniel Polsky, 2012. "Health Service Use Among The Previously Uninsured: Is Subsidized Health Insurance Enough?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(10), pages 1155-1168, October.
    5. Yingying Dong, 2013. "How Health Insurance Affects Health Care Demand—A Structural Analysis Of Behavioral Moral Hazard And Adverse Selection," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 51(2), pages 1324-1344, April.
    6. Justin Falk, 2012. "Comparing Wages in the Federal Government and the Private Sector: Working Paper 2012-03," Working Papers 42922, Congressional Budget Office.
    7. Manoli, Dayanand & Weber, Andrea, 2016. "The Effects of the Early Retirement Age on Retirement Decisions," IZA Discussion Papers 10154, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Joseph Antos & Alan D. Viard & Alex Brill & Andrew G. Biggs, 2015. "Tax and spending reform for fiscal stability and economic growth," AEI Economic Perspectives, American Enterprise Institute, May.
    9. Michele Campolieti, 2018. "Matching and Inverse Propensity Weighting Estimates of the Union Wage Premium: Evidence from Canada, 1997–2014," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(1), pages 101-130, January.
    10. Diane Coffey & Ashwini Deshpande & Jeffrey Hammer & Dean Spears, 2019. "Local Social Inequality, Economic Inequality, and Disparities in Child Height in India," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 56(4), pages 1427-1452, August.
    11. Joanna Tyrowicz & Lucas van der Velde, 2017. "When the opportunity knocks: large structural shocks and gender wage gaps," GRAPE Working Papers 2, GRAPE Group for Research in Applied Economics.
    12. Charles Courtemanche & James Marton & Benjamin Ukert & Aaron Yelowitz & Daniela Zapata, 2018. "Early Effects of the Affordable Care Act on Health Care Access, Risky Health Behaviors, and Self‐Assessed Health," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 84(3), pages 660-691, January.
    13. Angrisani, Marco & Atella, Vincenzo & Brunetti, Marianna, 2018. "Public health insurance and household portfolio Choices: Unravelling financial “Side Effects” of Medicare," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 198-212.
    14. Samuel Sebsibie & Workineh Asmare & Tessema Endalkachew, 2015. "Agricultural Technology Adoption and Rural Poverty: a Study on Smallholders in Amhara Regional State, Ethiopia," Ethiopian Journal of Economics, Ethiopian Economics Association, vol. 23(2), December.
    15. Marianne P. Bitler & Christopher S. Carpenter & Danea Horn, 2021. "Effects of the Colorectal Cancer Control Program," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(11), pages 2667-2685, November.
    16. Bhorat, Haroon & Goga, Sumayya & Stanwix, Benjamin, 2014. "Skills-biased labour demand and the pursuit of inclusive growth in South Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series 130, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    17. Battisti, Michele & Gatto, Massimo Del & Parmeter, Christopher F., 2022. "Skill-biased technical change and labor market inefficiency," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    18. Thorvaldur Gylfason & Inmaculada Martínez-Zarzoso & Per Magnus Wijkman, 2015. "Free Trade Agreements, Institutions and the Exports of Eastern Partnership Countries," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(6), pages 1214-1229, November.
    19. Patrick Richard & Regine Walker & Pierre Alexandre, 2018. "The burden of out of pocket costs and medical debt faced by households with chronic health conditions in the United States," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(6), pages 1-13, June.
    20. Leone Leonida & Marianna Marra & Sergio Scicchitano & Antonio Giangreco & Marco Biagetti, 2020. "Estimating the Wage Premium to Supervision for Middle Managers in Different Contexts: Evidence from Germany and the UK," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 34(6), pages 1004-1026, December.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:mrr:papers:wp297. 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: MRRC Administrator (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/isumius.html .

    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.