Volume 37, Number 2 (Spring) 2002
Bound, John, and Timothy Waidmann. 2002. "Accounting for Recent Declines in Employment Rates among the Working-aged Men and Women with Disabilities." Journal of Human Resources 37(2): 231-250.
During the 1 990s, while overall employment rates for working-aged men and women either remained roughly constant (men) or rose (women), employment rates for people with disabilities fell. During the same period the fraction of the working-aged population receiving Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) benefits increased quite dramatically. We present simple time series and cross-state evidence suggesting that the growth in the DI program can account for much of the decline in the relative employment position of men and women with disabilities.
John Bound is a professor of economics at the University of Michigan and a research associate at the National Bureau for Economic Research. Timothy Waidmann is a Senior Research Associate at the Urban Institute. The authors would like to thank Julie Cullen, an anonymous referee. and especially David Stapleton for extremely useful comments on an earlier version of this paper, and N. E. Barr and Mary Claire Toomey for help with preparation of the manuscript.
© 2003 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
US ISSN 0022-166X