The Rise In The Disability Rolls And The Decline In Unemployment

David Autor () and Mark Duggan

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2003, vol. 118, issue 1, pages 157-205

Abstract: Between 1984 and 2001, the share of nonelderly adults receiving Social Security Disability Insurance income (DI) rose by 60 percent to 5.3 million beneficiaries. Rapid program growth despite improving aggregate health appears to be explained by reduced screening stringency, declining demand for less skilled workers, and an unforeseen increase in the earnings replacement rate. We estimate that the sum of these forces doubled the labor force exit propensity of displaced high school dropouts after 1984, lowering measured U. S. unemployment by one-half a percentage point. Steady state calculations augur a further 40 percent increase in the rate of DI receipt. © 2001 the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Date: 2003
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations View citations in EconPapers (132) Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.catchword.com/cgi-bin/cgi?ini=bc&body=l ... 030201)118:1L.157;1- (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tpr:qjecon:v:118:y:2003:i:1:p:157-205

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://mitpress.mit. ... me.tcl?issn=00335533

Access Statistics for this article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics is edited by Robert J. Barro, Edward L. Glaeser and Lawrence F. Katz

More articles in The Quarterly Journal of Economics from MIT Press
Series data maintained by Karie Kirkpatrick ().