Workers' Applications to Social Insurance Programs when Earnings and Eligibility Are Uncertain

Brent Kreider ()

Staff General Research Papers Archive from Iowa State University, Department of Economics

Abstract: A worker's decision whether to apply for public transfers may depend not only on his expected level of foregone labor earnings but also on his degree of uncertainty about such earnings. This paper provides theory and evidence about the effects of earnings and eligibility uncertainty on participation decisions. The application rate to the Social Security Disability Insurance program is estimated to be about 15 percent higher than it would be in the absence of earnings risk. As an application to tax policy, optimal marginal wage tax rates may be higher than indicated in previous analyses involving wage uncertainty.

Date: 1998-10-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Published in Journal of Labor Economics, October 1998,, pp. 848-877

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/10.1086/209939.pdf?acceptTC=true
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
Journal Article: Workers' Applications to Social Insurance Programs When Earnings and Eligibility Are Uncertain (1998)
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:isu:genres:5189

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Staff General Research Papers Archive from Iowa State University, Department of Economics Iowa State University, Dept. of Economics, 260 Heady Hall, Ames, IA 50011-1070. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Curtis Balmer ().