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To Work for Yourself, for Others, or Not At All? How Disability Benefits Affect the Employment Decisions of Older Veterans

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  • Courtney Coile
  • Mark Duggan
  • Audrey Guo

Abstract

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Disability Compensation (DC) program provides disability benefits to nearly one in five military veterans in the US and its annual expenditures exceed $60 billion. We examine how the receipt of DC benefits affects the employment decisions of older veterans. We make use of variation in program eligibility resulting from a 2001 policy change that increased access to the program for Vietnam veterans who served with “boots on the ground” in the Vietnam theater but not for other veterans of that same era. We find that the policy-induced increase in program enrollment decreased labor force participation and induced a substantially larger switch from wage employment to self-employment. This latter finding suggests that an exogenous increase in income spurred many older veterans to start their own businesses. Additionally, we estimate that one in four veterans who entered the DC program due to this policy change left the labor force, estimates in the same range as those from recent studies of the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program.

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  • Courtney Coile & Mark Duggan & Audrey Guo, 2016. "To Work for Yourself, for Others, or Not At All? How Disability Benefits Affect the Employment Decisions of Older Veterans," NBER Working Papers 23006, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23006
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    3. Ramnath, Shanthi & Shoven, John B. & Slavov, Sita Nataraj, 2021. "Pathways to retirement through self-employment," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(2), pages 232-251, April.

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    JEL classification:

    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply

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