International Comparisons of Work Disability

James Banks, Arie Kapteyn, James Smith and Arthur van Soest (avas@uvt.nl)

No 1118, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Self-reported work disability is analyzed in the US, the UK and the Netherlands. Different wordings of the questions lead to different work disability rates. But even if identical questions are asked, cross-country differences remain substantial. Respondent evaluations of work limitations of hypothetical persons described in vignettes are used to identify the extent to which differences in self-reports between countries or socio-economic groups are due to systematic variation in the response scales. Results suggest that more than half of the difference between the rates of self-reported work disability in the US and the Netherlands can be explained by response scale differences. A similar methodology is used to analyze the reporting bias that arises if respondents justify being on disability benefits by overstating their work limiting disabilities.

Keywords: reporting bias; vignettes; work limiting disability; justification bias (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C81 I12 J28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2004-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-hea and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Published - published in: David Cutler and David Wise (eds.), Health at Older Ages: The Causes and Consequences of Declining Disability Among the Elderly, University of Chicago Press, 2008, 251-294

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp1118.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: International Comparisons of Work Disability (2004)
Working Paper: International Comparisons of Work Disability (2004)
Working Paper: International Comparisons of Work Disability (2004)
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:iza:izadps:dp1118

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany
library@iza.org

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte (hinte@iza.org).