We find that, over their 1990s business cycles, the entire distribution of after-tax household size-adjusted income moved to the right in the United States and Great Britain while inequality declined. In contrast, Germany and Japan had less income growth, a rise in inequality and a decline in...

Theoretical models argue that poor health will contribute to early exit from the labor market and the decision to take early Social Security retirement benefits (Old-Age or OA benefits). However, most empirical estimates of the causal importance of health on the decision to take early OA...

Using panel data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation linked to Social Security Administration disability determination records we trace the pattern of household income and the sources of that income from 38 months prior to 39 months following application for Social Security...

The rate of application for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits, as well as the number of beneficiaries has been increasing for the past several decades, threatening the solvency of the SSDI program. One possible remedy is to promote continued employment amongst those...

Using linked 2009 Current Population Survey (CPS)-Annual Social and Economic Supplement/Social Security Administration records data and a definition of disability based on the six-question disability sequence (6QS) in the CPS-Basic Monthly Survey, we perform a face validity test that shows that...

This paper compares a variety of measures of fatness (e.g. BMI, waist circumference, waist-tohip ratio, percent body fat) in terms of their ability to predict application for Social Security Disability Insurance (DI). This is possible through a recent linkage of the National Health and Nutrition...

In the 1990s, social expectations of single mothers shifted towards the notion that most should, could, and would work, if given the proper incentives. This shift in expectations culminated in the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act in 1996, commonly...

In the 1990s, the United States reformed welfare programs targeted on single mothers and dramatically reduced their benefit receipt while increasing their employment and economic wellbeing. Despite increasing calls to do the same for working age people with disabilities in the U.S., disability...

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Government policies attempt to mitigate the economic risks to households of major life transitions. This paper focuses on two such transitions that social security systems typically insure against—long term exits from the labor market (retirement, disability, unemployment insurance) and the...