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Disability and Employment: Reevaluating the Evidence in Light of Reporting Errors

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Author Info
Brent Kreider (Iowa State University)
John V. Pepper (University of Virginia)

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Abstract

Long-standing debates about relationships between labor supply behavior and health status among persons nearing retirement age have centered largely on disagreements about the reliability of self-reported health indicators. In light of reporting errors in work capacity, this paper considers the problem of predicting how employment rates vary with disability status when "true" disability is unobserved. Rather than imposing the strong assumptions required to obtain point identification, we take a step back to evaluate what can be inferred under a variety of assumptions that are weaker but arguably more credible than those imposed in the existing literature. Although these assumptions do not identify the conditional employment rates except in special cases, nonparametric bounds for these parameters can be obtained. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, we estimate a set of bounds that formalize the identifying power of a number of di¤erent assumptions that appear to have broad consensus in the literature. Our results suggest that models estimated under the assumption of fully accurate reporting lead to biased inferences. In particular, it appears that nonworkers tend to overreport disabilities.

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Paper provided by Center for Retirement Research in its series Working Papers, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College with number 2002-06.

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Length: 39 pages
Date of creation: 01 Sep 2002
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:crr:crrwps:2002-06

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Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. John Pepper & Brent Kreider, 2001. "Inferring Disability Status from Corrupt Data," Virginia Economics Online Papers 354, University of Virginia, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  2. Debra Sabatini Dwyer & Olivia S. Mitchell, 1998. "Health Problems as Determinants of Retirement: Are Self-Rated Measures Endogenous?," NBER Working Papers 6503, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  3. Berkovec, James & Stern, Steven, 1991. "Job Exit Behavior of Older Men," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(1), pages 189-210, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Boskin, Michael J. & Hurd, Michael D., 1978. "The effect of social security on early retirement," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 361-377, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  5. Haveman, Robert H & Wolfe, Barbara L, 1984. "The Decline in Male Labor Force Participation: Comment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 92(3), pages 532-41, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. repec:att:wimass:199217 is not listed on IDEAS
  7. Charles F. Manski & John V. Pepper, 2000. "Monotone Instrumental Variables, with an Application to the Returns to Schooling," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(4), pages 997-1012, July.
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  8. Parsons, Donald O, 1991. "The Health and Earnings of Rejected Disability Insurance Applicants: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1419-26, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Bound, John & Burkhauser, Richard V., 1999. "Economic analysis of transfer programs targeted on people with disabilities," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 51, pages 3417-3528 Elsevier. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Chirikos, Thomas N. & Nestel, Gilbert, 1984. "Economic determinants and consequences of self-reported work disability," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(2), pages 117-136, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. Parsons, Donald O., 1996. "Imperfect 'tagging' in social insurance programs," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(1-2), pages 183-207, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  12. Gordon, Roger H. & Blinder, Alan S., 1980. "Market wages, reservation wages, and retirement decisions," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 277-308, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  13. Horowitz, Joel L & Manski, Charles F, 1995. "Identification and Robustness with Contaminated and Corrupted Data," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 63(2), pages 281-302, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  14. Hanoch, Giora & Honig, Marjorie, 1983. "Retirement, Wages, and Labor Supply of the Elderly," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 1(2), pages 131-51, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  15. Anderson, Kathryn H. & Burkhauser, Richard V., 1984. "The importance of the measure of health in empirical estimates of the labor supply of older men," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 16(3-4), pages 375-380. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  16. Hugo Benitez-Silva & Moshe Buchinsky & Hiu-Man Chan & John Rust & Sofia Sheivasser, 1997. "An Empirical Analysis of the Social Security Disability Application, Appeal, and Award Process," Public Economics 9712001, EconWPA, revised 16 Feb 1998. [Downloadable!]
  17. Kathleen McGarry, 2002. "Health and Retirement: Do Changes in Health Affect Retirement Expectations?," NBER Working Papers 9317, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  18. repec:att:wimass:199525 is not listed on IDEAS
  19. Bound, John, 1991. "The Health and Earnings of Rejected Disability Insurance Applicants: Reply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1427-34, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  20. Hugo Benitez-Silva & Moshe Buchinsky & Hiu Man Chan & Sofia Cheidvasser & John Rust, 2000. "How Large is the Bias in Self-Reported Disability?," Working Papers 2000-01, Brown University, Department of Economics.
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  21. John Bound & Michael Schoenbaum & Timothy Waidmann, 1995. "Race and Education Differences in Disability Status and Labor Force Attachment," NBER Working Papers 5159, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  22. Horowitz, J.L. & Manski, C.F., 1995. "Censoring of Outcomes and Regressors Due to Survey Nonresponse: Identification and estimation Using Weights and Imputations," Working Papers 95-12, University of Iowa, Department of Economics.
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  23. Parsons, Donald O, 1984. "Disability Insurance and Male Labor Force Participation: A Response," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 92(3), pages 542-49, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  24. Owen O'Donnell, 1998. "The Effect of Disability on Employment Allowing for Work Incapacity," Studies in Economics 9813, Department of Economics, University of Kent. [Downloadable!]
Full references

Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Christine Jolls & J.J. Prescott, 2004. "Disaggregating Employment Protection: The Case of Disability Discrimination," NBER Working Papers 10740, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Gundersen, Craig & Kreider, Brent, 2008. "Bounding the Effects of Food Insecurity on Children's Health Outcomes," Staff General Research Papers 13008, Iowa State University, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  3. repec:ese:iserwp: is not listed on IDEAS
  4. Martin Huber & Michael Lechner & Conny Wunsch, 2009. "Does Leaving Welfare Improve Health? Evidence for Germany," University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series 2009 2009-21, Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  5. Lechner, Michael & Vazquez-Alvarez, Rosalia, 2004. "The Effect of Disability on Labour Market Outcomes in Germany: Evidence from Matching," CEPR Discussion Papers 4223, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  6. Sergi Jiménez-Martín & José M. Labeaga & Cristina Vilaplana Prieto, . "A sequential model for older workers’ labor transitions after a health shock," Working Papers 2005-23, FEDEA. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  7. Brent Kreider & John Pepper, 2008. "Inferring disability status from corrupt data," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(3), pages 329-349. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  8. Doreen Wing Han Au & Thomas F. Crossley & Martin Schellhorn, 2005. "The effect of health changes and long-term health on the work activity of older Canadians," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(10), pages 999-1018. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  9. Gundersen, Craig & Kreider, Brent, 2006. "Food Stamps and Food Insecurity: What Can Be Learned in the Presence of Non-classical Measurement Error?," Staff General Research Papers 12690, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    Other versions:
  10. Kreider, Brent & Hill, Steven C., 2005. "Partially Identifying Treatment Effects with an Application to Covering the Uninsured," Staff General Research Papers 12296, Iowa State University, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  11. Victor Chernozhukov & Sokbae 'Simon' Lee & Adam Rosen, 2009. "Intersection Bounds: estimation and inference," CeMMAP working papers CWP19/09, Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice, Institute for Fiscal Studies. [Downloadable!]
  12. Sergi Jiménez-Martín & José M. Labeaga & Cristina Vilaplana Prieto, 2006. "A sequential model of older workers' labor force transitions after a health shock," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 15(9), pages 1033-1054. [Downloadable!]
  13. Sullivan, Paul, 2007. "Estimation of an Occupational Choice Model when Occupations are Misclassified," MPRA Paper 862, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Oct 2007. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  14. Hirano, Keisuke & Porter, Jack, 2009. "Impossibility Results for Nondifferentiable Functionals," MPRA Paper 15990, University Library of Munich, Germany. [Downloadable!]
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