Labor Supply Incentives and Disincentives for the Disabled / Jonathan S. Leonard.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Leonard, Jonathan S.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w1744.

NBER working paper series no. w1744

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 1985.

Summary:

The past three decades have witnessed a large and puzzling decline in labor force participation by prime-age males, and a correspondingly large increase in Social Security disability beneficiary roles.This paper reviews the analytical studies that have attempted to determine the causal links between disability, beneficiary status, and labor-force non-participation. Although disability is often thought of as a purely medically determined condition with no labor supply responsiveness to economic factors, models of Social Security disability beneficiary status as an economic decision have had some success in explaining both the growth of the program and the decline in labor force participation. These studies have, however, produced a wide range of estimates of labor supply elasticity, in part because of the difficulty of the underlying econometric problem of estimating the response to two (or more) potential income streams, only one of which is usually observed for any individual.

Notes:

Print version record

October 1985.