Early Determinants of Work Disability in an International Perspective

Axel Börsch-Supan (), Tabea Bucher-Koenen and Felizia Hanemann
Additional contact information
Axel Börsch-Supan: Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA) at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy
Tabea Bucher-Koenen: Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA) at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy
Felizia Hanemann: Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA) at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy

Demography, 2020, vol. 57, issue 5, No 11, 1853-1879

Abstract: Abstract This study explores 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 as a result of physical or mental illness. We exploit the large international variation of health, self-reported WD, and the uptake of DI benefits in the United States and Europe using a harmonized data set with life history information assembled from SHARE, ELSA, and HRS. We find that the mismatch between WD and DI benefit receipt varies greatly across countries. Objective health explains a substantial share of the within-country variation in DI, but this is not the case for the variation across countries. Rather, most of the variation between countries and the mismatches are explained by differences in DI policies.

Keywords: Social security and public pensions; Work disability; Disability insurance; International comparisons; Life histories (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s13524-020-00902-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:demogr:v:57:y:2020:i:5:d:10.1007_s13524-020-00902-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/13524

DOI: 10.1007/s13524-020-00902-7

Access Statistics for this article

Demography is currently edited by John D. Iceland, Stephen A. Matthews and Jenny Van Hook

More articles in Demography from Springer, Population Association of America (PAA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().