IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/8247.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Are the Young Becoming More Disabled?

Author

Listed:
  • Darius Lakdawalla
  • Dana Goldman
  • Jay Bhattacharya

Abstract

A fair amount of research suggests that health has been improving among the elderly over the past 10 to 15 years. Comparatively little research effort, however, has been focused on analyzing disability among the young. In this paper, we argue that health among the young has been deteriorating, at the same time that the elderly have been becoming healthier. Moreover, this growth in disability may end up translating into higher disability rates for tomorrow's elderly. Using data from the National Health Interview Survey, we find that, from 1984 to 1996, the rate of disability among those in their 40s rose by one full percentage point, or almost forty percent. Over the same period, the rate of disability declined for the elderly. The recent growth in disability has coincided with substantial growth in asthma and diabetes among the young. Indeed, the growth in asthma alone seems more than enough to explain the change in disability. Therefore, we argue that the growth in disability stems from real changes in underlying health status.

Suggested Citation

  • Darius Lakdawalla & Dana Goldman & Jay Bhattacharya, 2001. "Are the Young Becoming More Disabled?," NBER Working Papers 8247, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:8247
    Note: EH
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w8247.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert F. Schoeni & Vicki A. Freedman & Robert B. Wallace, 2001. "Persistent, Consistent, Widespread, and Robust? Another Look at Recent Trends in Old-Age Disability," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 56(4), pages 206-218.
    2. John Bound & Timothy Waidmann, 2000. "Accounting for Recent Declines in Employment Rates among the Working-Aged Disabled," NBER Working Papers 7975, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Jay Bhattacharya & Alan M. Garber & Thomas MaCurdy, 1996. "Cause-Specific Mortality among Medicare Enrollees," NBER Working Papers 5409, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Darius Lakdawalla & Tomas Philipson, 1999. "Aging and the Growth of Long-Term Care," NBER Working Papers 6980, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Timothy Waidmann & John Bound & Michael Schoenbaum, 1995. "The Illusion of Failure: Trends in the Self-Reported Health of the U.S. Elderly," NBER Working Papers 5017, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. repec:hoo:wpaper:e-90-11 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Thomas MaCurdy & David Green & Harry Paarsch, 1990. "Assessing Empirical Approaches for Analyzing Taxes and Labor Supply," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 25(3), pages 415-490.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gabriel Aranovich & Jay Bhattacharya & Alan M. Garber & Thomas E. MaCurdy, 2009. "Coping with Chronic Disease? Chronic Disease and Disability in Elderly American Population 1982-1999," NBER Working Papers 14811, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Linda Martin & Robert Schoeni & Patricia Andreski, 2010. "Trends in health of older adults in the United States: Past, present, future," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 47(1), pages 17-40, March.
    3. Bhattacharya Jayanta & Cutler David M. & Goldman Dana P. & Hurd Michael D. & Joyce Geoffrey F. & Lakdawalla Darius N. & Panis Constantijn W. A. & Shang Baoping, 2004. "Disability Forecasts and Future Medicare Costs," Forum for Health Economics & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 7(1), pages 1-22, January.
    4. David T. Ellwood, 2001. "The Sputtering Labor Force of the 21st Century. Can Social Policy Help?," NBER Working Papers 8321, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Bound, John & Cullen, Julie Berry & Nichols, Austin & Schmidt, Lucie, 2004. "The welfare implications of increasing disability insurance benefit generosity," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(12), pages 2487-2514, December.
    6. John Bound & Julie Berry Cullen & Austin Nichols & Lucie Schmidt, 2002. "The Welfare Implications of Increasing DI Benefit Generosity," Working Papers wp024, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    7. John Bound & Todd Stinebrickner & Timothy Waidman, 2004. "Using a Structural Retirement Model to Simulate the Effect of Changes to the OASDI and Medicare Programs," Working Papers wp091, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    8. Richard V. Burkhauser & Mathis Schröder, 2004. "A Cross-National Comparison of the Employment for Men With Disabilities: The United States and Germany in the 1980s and 1990s”," Working Papers wp071, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    9. van Soest, A.H.O. & Das, J.W.M., 2000. "Family Labor Supply and Proposed Tax Reforms in the Netherlands," Discussion Paper 2000-20, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    10. Alicia H. Munnell & Steven A. Sass, 2007. "The Labor Supply of Older Americans," Working Papers, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College wp2007-12, Center for Retirement Research, revised Jun 2007.
    11. Bessho, Shun-ichiro & Hayashi, Masayoshi, 2014. "Intensive margins, extensive margins, and spousal allowances in the Japanese system of personal income taxes: A discrete choice analysis," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 162-178.
    12. Wanchuan Lin, 2009. "Why has the health inequality among infants in the US declined? Accounting for the shrinking gap," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(7), pages 823-841, July.
    13. Thomas J. Kniesner & James P. Ziliak, 2002. "Tax Reform and Automatic Stabilization," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(3), pages 590-612, June.
    14. Sanz Labrador, Ismael & Sanz-Sanz, José Félix, 2013. "Política fiscal y crecimiento económico: consideraciones microeconómicas y relaciones macroeconómicas," Macroeconomía del Desarrollo 5367, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
    15. Benhura, Miracle, 2007. "Determinants of South African Women’s Labour Force Participation, 1995–2004," IZA Discussion Papers 3119, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    16. Emmanuel Saez, 2010. "Do Taxpayers Bunch at Kink Points?," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 2(3), pages 180-212, August.
    17. David Blau, 2003. "Child Care Subsidy Programs," NBER Chapters, in: Means-Tested Transfer Programs in the United States, pages 443-516, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. José Labeaga & Xisco Oliver & Amedeo Spadaro, 2008. "Discrete choice models of labour supply, behavioural microsimulation and the Spanish tax reforms," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 6(3), pages 247-273, September.
    19. Heim, Bradley T. & Meyer, Bruce D., 2004. "Work costs and nonconvex preferences in the estimation of labor supply models," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(11), pages 2323-2338, September.
    20. Darius Lakdawalla & Tomas Philipson, 2001. "Public Financing and the Market for Long-Term Care," NBER Chapters, in: Frontiers in Health Policy Research, Volume 4, pages 77-94, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health

    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:8247. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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.