IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Login to save this paper or follow this series

Measuring the (Income) Effect of Disability Insurance Generosity on Labour Market Participation

Author Info

  • Marie Olivier
  • Vall Castello Judit

    (METEOR)

Abstract

We analyze the employment effect of a law that provides for a 36 percent increase in thegenerosity of disability insurance (DI) for claimants who are, as a result of their lack of skillsand of the labour market conditions they face, deemed unlikely to find a job. The selectionprocess for treatment is therefore conditional on having a low probability of employment, makingevaluation of its effect intrinsically difficult. We exploit the fact that the benefit increase isonly available to individuals aged 55 or older, estimating its impact using a regressiondiscontinuity approach. Our first results indicate a large drop in employment for disabledindividuals who receive the increase in the benefit. Testing for the linearity of covariatesaround the eligibility age threshold reveals that the age at which individuals start claiming DIis not continuous: the benefit increase appears to accelerate the entry rate of individuals aged55 or over. We obtain new estimates excluding this group of claimants, and find that the policydecreases the employment probability by 8 percent. We conclude that the observed DI generosityelasticity of 0.22 on labour market participation is mostly due to income effects since benefitreceipt is not work contingent in the system studied.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

File URL: http://digitalarchive.maastrichtuniversity.nl/fedora/objects/guid:f65d55dd-729f-4b16-9cc4-068dc4150e4d/datastreams/ASSET1/content
Our checks indicate that this address may not be valid because: 401 Unauthorized. If this is indeed the case, please notify (Charles Bollen)


Download Restriction: no

Paper provided by Maastricht University, Maastricht Research School of Economics of Technology and Organization (METEOR) in its series Research Memorandum with number 050.

as
in new window

Length:
Date of creation: 2011
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:unm:umamet:2011050
Contact details of provider: Postal: P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht
Phone: +31 (0)43 38 83 830
Web page: http://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/Email:


More information through EDIRC

Keywords: labour organization;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • J14 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of the Elderly; Economics of the Handicapped; Non-Labor Market Discrimination
  • J26 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Retirement; Retirement Policies
  • J40 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - General

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

as in new window
  1. Joshua D. Angrist & Stacey H. Chen & Brigham R. Frandsen, 2010. "Did Vietnam Veterans Get Sicker in the 1990s? The Complicated Effects of Military Service on Self-Reported Health," CEP Discussion Papers dp1041, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
  2. Judit Vall Castello, 2010. "Promoting Employment of Disabled Women in Spain; Evaluating a Policy," Working Papers 2010-10, FEDEA.
  3. Chen, Susan & van der Klaauw, Wilbert, 2008. "The work disincentive effects of the disability insurance program in the 1990s," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 757-784, February.
  4. Lalive, Rafael & Wuellrich, Jean-Philippe & Zweimüller, Josef, 2009. "Do Financial Incentives for Firms Promote Employment of Disabled Workers? A Regression Discontinuity Approach," CEPR Discussion Papers 7373, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  5. Blundell, Richard & Costa Dias, Monica, 2008. "Alternative Approaches to Evaluation in Empirical Microeconomics," IZA Discussion Papers 3800, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  6. John Bound & Julie Berry Cullen & Austin Nichols & Lucie Schmidt, 2002. "The Welfare Implications of Increasing Disability Insurance Benefit Generosity," Department of Economics Working Papers 2002-02, Department of Economics, Williams College.
  7. Bell, David N.F. & Heitmueller, Axel, 2005. "The Disability Discrimination Act in the UK: Helping or Hindering Employment Amongst the Disabled?," IZA Discussion Papers 1476, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  8. David Autor & Mark Duggan, 2006. "The Growth in the Social Security Disability Rolls: A Fiscal Crisis Unfolding," NBER Working Papers 12436, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  9. Guido Imbens & Karthik Kalyanaraman, 2009. "Optimal Bandwidth Choice for the Regression Discontinuity Estimator," NBER Working Papers 14726, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  10. McCrary, Justin, 2008. "Manipulation of the running variable in the regression discontinuity design: A density test," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 698-714, February.
  11. Till von Wachter & Jae Song & Joyce Manchester, 2011. "Trends in Employment and Earnings of Allowed and Rejected Applicants to the Social Security Disability Insurance Program," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(7), pages 3308-29, December.
  12. repec:dgr:kubcen:2006116 is not listed on IDEAS
  13. Jonathan Gruber, 1996. "Disability Insurance Benefits and Labor Supply," NBER Working Papers 5866, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  14. David S. Lee & Thomas Lemieux, 2010. "Regression Discontinuity Designs in Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(2), pages 281-355, June.
  15. Staubli, Stefan, 2011. "The impact of stricter criteria for disability insurance on labor force participation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(9), pages 1223-1235.
  16. van Ours, J.C., 2006. "Leaving "Hotel California" : How Incentives Affect Flows of Benefit Recipients in the Netherlands," Discussion Paper 2006-116, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
  17. Boyle, Melissa A. & Lahey, Joanna N., 2010. "Health insurance and the labor supply decisions of older workers: Evidence from a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs expansion," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(7-8), pages 467-478, August.
  18. Hahn, Jinyong & Todd, Petra & Van der Klaauw, Wilbert, 2001. "Identification and Estimation of Treatment Effects with a Regression-Discontinuity Design," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(1), pages 201-09, January.
  19. Humer, Brigitte & Wuellrich, Jean-Philippe & Zweimüller, Josef, 2007. "Integrating Severely Disabled Individuals into the Labour Market: The Austrian Case," IZA Discussion Papers 2649, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  20. John Bound, 1989. "The Health and Earnings of Rejected Disability Insurance Applicants," NBER Working Papers 2816, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  21. Richard V. Burkhauser & Mary C. Daly & Philip R. de Jong, 2008. "Curing the Dutch Disease: Lessons for United States Disability Policy," Working Papers wp188, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
  22. Imbens, Guido W. & Lemieux, Thomas, 2008. "Regression discontinuity designs: A guide to practice," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 615-635, February.
  23. David H. Autor & Mark G. Duggan, 2007. "Distinguishing Income from Substitution Effects in Disability Insurance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(2), pages 119-124, May.
  24. Sergi Jiménez Martín & Judit Vall Castello, 2009. "Business Cycle Effects on Labour Force Transitions for Older People in Spain," Working Papers 2009-25, FEDEA.
  25. Nicola Duell & Shruti Singh & Peter Tergeist, 2009. "Activation Policies in Norway," OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers 78, OECD Publishing.
  26. David H. Autor & Mark G. Duggan & David S. Lyle, 2011. "Battle Scars? The Puzzling Decline in Employment and Rise in Disability Receipt among Vietnam Era Veterans," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(3), pages 339-44, May.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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

as in new window


Cited by:

  1. Cueto, Begona & Miguel Á., Malo, 2014. "Do partial disability pensions close the earnings gap?," MPRA Paper 55920, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  2. Buetler, Monika & Lechner, Michael & Thiemann, Petra & Deuchert, Eva & Staubli, Stefan, 2014. "Financial work incentives for disability benefit recipients: Lessons from a randomized field experiment," Economics Working Paper Series 1406, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
  3. Jose I. Silva & Judit Vall-Castello, 2013. "Partial Disability System and Labor Market Adjustment: The Case of Spain," Upjohn Working Papers and Journal Articles 13-201, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
  4. Silva, José I. & Vall-Castello, Judit, 2012. "Evaluating the Impact of a Reduction in the Generosity of Disability Benefits: The 2008 Spanish Reform," IZA Discussion Papers 6482, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  5. Kauer, Lukas, 2014. "The Effect of Cutting Disability Insurance Benefits on Labor Supply in Households," Economics Working Paper Series 1401, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
  6. Thomas Barnay, 2014. "Health, Work and Working Conditions: A Review of the European Economic Literature," TEPP Working Paper 2014-08, TEPP.
  7. Silva, José I. & Vall-Castello, Judit, 2012. "Why Are So Many Disabled Individuals Not Working in Spain? A Job Search Approach," IZA Discussion Papers 6317, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Access and download statistics

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:unm:umamet:2011050. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Charles Bollen)

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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

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

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.