Unequal use of social insurance benefits: The role of employers

Sarah Bana, Kelly Bedard, Maya Rossin-Slater and Jenna Stearns

Journal of Econometrics, 2023, vol. 233, issue 2, 633-660

Abstract: Disability Insurance (DI) and Paid Family Leave (PFL) programs are important sources of social insurance, but there is considerable inequality in benefit take-up, and little is known about the role of firms in determining benefit use. Using administrative data from California, we find that firms that pay higher earnings premiums also have substantially higher public DI and PFL take-up rates, and that this relationship is particularly strong among the lowest-earning workers within the firm. Our results suggest that changes in firm behavior may impact social insurance use, thus reducing an important dimension of inequality in America.

Keywords: Disability Insurance; Paid family Leave; Social insurance; Firm premium (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J31 J32 J38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304407622000628
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Unequal Use of Social Insurance Benefits: The Role of Employers (2018)
Working Paper: Unequal Use of Social Insurance Benefits: The Role of Employers (2018)
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:eee:econom:v:233:y:2023:i:2:p:633-660

DOI: 10.1016/j.jeconom.2022.02.008

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Econometrics is currently edited by T. Amemiya, A. R. Gallant, J. F. Geweke, C. Hsiao and P. M. Robinson

More articles in Journal of Econometrics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().