Longitudinal administrative data show that rejected male applicants to the Disability Insurance (DI) program who are younger or have low-mortality impairments such as back pain and mental health problems exhibit substantial labor force attachment. While we confirm that employment rates of older...

In 2008, a group of uninsured low-income adults in Oregon was selected by lottery for the chance to apply for Medicaid. Using this randomized design and 2009 administrative data, we find no significant effect of Medicaid on employment or earnings. Our 95 percent confidence intervals allow us to...

We use the draft lottery to construct instrumental variables (IV) estimates of the impact of Vietnam-era military service on veterans' Social Security (SSA) earnings through 2007. We also use SSA data to construct IV estimates for employment (as measured by an indicator for positive earnings)...

Consumer bankruptcy is one of the largest social insurance programs in the United States, but little is known about its impact on debtors. We use 500,000 bankruptcy filings matched to administrative tax and foreclosure data to estimate the impact of Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection on subsequent...

The current literature offers two views on the nature of the labor income process. According to the first view, individuals are subject to very persistent income shocks while facing similar life-cycle income profiles (the RIP process, Thomas MaCurdy 1982). According to the alternative,...

Fiscal stimulus payments (i.e., direct lump-sum payments from the government to households) were used in the recessions of 2001 and 2008 in an attempt to simultaneously alleviate households' economic hardship and stimulate aggregate demand. Despite the similarities between the two stimulus...