IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/28471.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Does Marijuana Legalization Affect Work Capacity? Evidence from Workers’ Compensation Benefits

Author

Listed:
  • Rahi Abouk
  • Keshar M. Ghimire
  • Johanna Catherine Maclean
  • David Powell

Abstract

We study the effect of state recreational marijuana laws (RMLs) on workers’ compensation (WC) benefit receipt among adults 40-62 years. We find that WC receipt declines in response to RML adoption both in terms of the propensity to receive benefits and benefit amount. We estimate complementary declines in non-traumatic workplace injury rates and the incidence of work-limiting disabilities. We offer evidence that the primary driver of these reductions is an improvement in work capacity, likely due to access to an additional form of pain management therapy.

Suggested Citation

  • Rahi Abouk & Keshar M. Ghimire & Johanna Catherine Maclean & David Powell, 2021. "Does Marijuana Legalization Affect Work Capacity? Evidence from Workers’ Compensation Benefits," NBER Working Papers 28471, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28471
    Note: EH
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w28471.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jason Brown & Elior Cohen & Alison Felix, 2023. "Economic Benefits and Social Costs of Legalizing Recreational Marijuana," Research Working Paper RWP 23-10, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
    2. Chakraborty Avinandan & Doremus Jacqueline & Stith Sarah, 2021. "The effects of recreational cannabis access on labor markets: evidence from Colorado," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Sciendo & Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 10(1), pages 1-86, January.
    3. Anderson, D. Mark & Rees, Daniel I., 2021. "The Public Health Effects of Legalizing Marijuana," IZA Discussion Papers 14292, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H12 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Crisis Management
    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • J32 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Nonwage Labor Costs and Benefits; Retirement Plans; Private Pensions

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28471. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.