In the last twenty years the labor force participation rates of 45 to 54-year-old men have fallen 10.6 percentage points among non-whites and 4.4 percentage points among whites. I find that nearly half of this puzzling decline can be explained by the growth of the Social Security Disability...

During the 1990s, while overall employment rates for working-aged men and women either remained roughly constant (men) or rose (women), employment rates for the disabled fell. During the same period the fraction of the working-aged population receiving Social Security Disability Insurance (DI)...

A key component for estimating the optimal size and structure of disability insurance (DI) programs is the elasticity of DI claiming with respect to benefit generosity. Yet, in many countries, including the United States, all workers face identical benefit schedules, which are a function of...

We examine the connection between taxes paid and benefits accrued under the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program on both the intensive and extensive margins. We perform these calculations for stylized workers given the existing benefit structure and disability hazard rates. On the...

While time out of work normally decreases subsequent employment, Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) may improve the health of disabled individuals and increase their ability to work. In this paper, I examine the employment of individuals who lost DI eligibility after the 1996 removal of...

We provide a detailed analysis of the incidence, duration and determinants of claims made on private Long Term Disability (LTD) policies using a database of approximately 10,000 policies and 1 million workers from a major LTD insurer. We document that LTD claims rates are much lower than claims...

The aim of this paper is to describe for (West) Germany the historical relationship between health and disability on the one hand and old-age labor force participation or early retirement on the other hand. We explore how both are linked with various pension reforms. To put the historical...

We study a fundamental reform of the public Disability Insurance (DI) system in Germany. Effective 2001, cohorts born after 1960 are no longer eligible for "occupational DI." Occupational DI (ODI) implies benefit eligibility when health shocks prevent employees from working in their previous...

Student disability rates have grown by over 50 percent over the past two decades and are continuing to rise. Policy discussion has linked this trend to state funding formulas that reward local school districts for identifying additional students with special needs. However, there is little...

Subsidies for health insurance for chronically ill, high-cost individuals may increase coverage in the broader population by improving the functioning of insurance markets. In this paper, we assess an historical example of a policy intervention of this sort, the extension of Medicare to the...