Working Paper: NBER ID: w25142
Authors: Axel Börsch-Supan; Tabea Bucher-Koenen; Felizia Hanemann
Abstract: This paper studies the interrelated roles of health and welfare state policies in the decision to take up disability insurance (DI) benefits due to work disability (WD), defined as the (partial) inability to engage in gainful employment due to physical or mental illness. We exploit the large international variation of health, self-reported WD and the uptake of DI benefits in the US and Europe using a harmonized data set with life history information assembled from the Survey of Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), the English Longitudinal Study on Ageing (ELSA) and the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). Particular attention is given to the role of life-time health and other life-time experiences in explaining WD and DI uptake later in life. We find that while our large set of health measures explains a substantial share of the within-country variation in WD and DI, this is not the case for the variation across countries. Rather, most of the variation between countries is explained by differences in DI policies.
Keywords: disability insurance; work disability; health policy; life course
JEL Codes: H55; J21; J26
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| health problems experienced over the life course (I12) | later work capacity (J29) |
| health problems experienced over the life course (I12) | reliance on disability insurance benefits (H55) |
| disability insurance system design (H55) | labor market behavior (J29) |
| DI policies differences (H73) | variations in DI benefit receipt (H53) |
| policy generosity (H55) | likelihood of receiving DI benefits (H55) |
| current health status (I12) | WD and DI benefit receipt (I38) |
| life course health indicators (I14) | WD and DI benefit receipt (I38) |