Does Marijuana Legalization Affect Work Capacity? Evidence from Workers’ Compensation Benefits

Rahi Abouk, Keshar Ghimire, Johanna Maclean and David Powell

No 28471, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We study the effect of state recreational marijuana laws (RMLs) on workers’ compensation (WC) benefit receipt among adults 40-62 years. We find that WC receipt declines in response to RML adoption both in terms of the propensity to receive benefits and benefit amount. We estimate complementary declines in non-traumatic workplace injury rates and the incidence of work-limiting disabilities. We offer evidence that the primary driver of these reductions is an improvement in work capacity, likely due to access to an additional form of pain management therapy.

JEL-codes: H12 I12 I18 J32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma and nep-ore
Note: EH
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w28471.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28471

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w28471

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by (wpc@nber.org).