Andreas I. Mueller, Jesse Rothstein, Till M. von Wachter. 2013. Unemployment insurance and disability insurance in the great recession. Working Paper 19672. National Bureau of Economic Research
Abstract: Disability insurance (DI) applications and awards are countercyclical. One potential explanation is that unemployed individuals who exhaust their Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits use DI as a form of extended benefits. We exploit the haphazard pattern of UI benefit extensions in the Great Recession to identify the effect of UI exhaustion on DI application, using both aggregate data at the state-month and state-week levels and micro data on unemployed individuals in the Current Population Survey. We find no indication that expiration of UI benefits causes DI applications. Our estimates are sufficiently precise to rule out effects of meaningful magnitude.
摘要：残疾保险的申请和授予是反周期的，一个可能的解释是：对于那些已经用尽失业保险金的失业者来说，残疾保险是一个很好的补充。我们同时使用现时人口调查中事业个体的综合数据（州-月层面与州-周层面）和微数据来研究大萧条时期失业保险金膨胀的随机模式，以确认失业保险枯竭对残疾保险申请的影响。我们没有发现任何迹象表明失业保险金的枯竭会诱发残疾保险申情。我们的判断足够精确，可以排除有意义的量值的影响。
数据来源：
l Social Security Administration (SSA) of SSDI, SSI, or SSDI/SSI applications at the state-By-month level between August 2004 and December 2012
l SSA’s Disability Research File covering the years 2008-2010
l Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) supplement to the Current Population Survey (CPS), administered in the spring of each year
研究方法：时间序列分析；面板数据分析；事件分析
Conclusion: This paper has used the uneven extension of UI benefits during and after the Great Recession to isolate variation in UI exhaustion that is not confounded By variation in economic conditions more broadly. Using a variety of analytical strategies, we have examined the relationship between UI exhaustion and uptake of DI benefits. None of the analyses presented here indicate a meaningful relationship. Although we cannot rule out small effects, all of the analyses indicate that the elasticity of DI applications with respect to UI exhaustion is 0.02 or smaller, far too small to account for the cyclical pattern of DI application or to contribute meaningfully to the cost-benefit analysis of UI extensions.
There are a number of caveats to this result. Most importantly, we must make assumptions about the timing of DI applications and awards induced By UI exhaustion. For the aggregate analyses, we must assume that any induced applications occur within three months (before or after) the date of UI exhaustion, while our CPS analysis can detect only induced applications that lead to receipt of payments within the same calendar year as an earlier UI exhaustion. There may be effects at longer lags – UI exhaustees may wait six months or more before applying for SSDI, or awards made to exhaustees might be disproportionately likely to require an appeal of an initial rejection. These possibilities mean that a causal link between UI exhaustion and DI cannot be conclusively ruled out.
Nevertheless, the analysis here counsels against the likelihood of such a link. It rather tends to support alternative explanations for the countercyclicality of DI applications. For example, the cyclical pattern may simply reflect variation in the potential reemployment wages of displaced workers (Davis and von Wachter 2011) or changes in the employment opportunities of the marginally disabled that influence SSA’s evaluation of the applicant’s employability. These alternative explanations may have quite different policy implications than would a link to UI. It is not clear, for example, that more stringent functional capacity reviews would reduce recession-induced DI claims if these claims reflect examiners’ judgments that the applicants are truly not employable in the extant labor market.
结论：本篇论文运用大萧条期间及其后的不匀失业保险金数据来隔绝那些未受经济环境广泛影响的失业保险金耗尽的变化。通过应用大量的分析方法，我们已经检验了失业保险金耗尽和残疾保险金申请之间的关系，然而没有一种方法得出二者之间有意义的关系。尽管一些微小影响无法完全排除，但所有的分析都表明残疾险申请对失业保险金用尽的弹性小于或等于2%，这远不足以解释伤残险申请的循环模式和失业保险金膨胀的成本效益分析。
对于这一结果有很多说明，最重要的是我们必须对由失业保险金耗尽所导致的残疾保险的申请与授予的时间段作出假设。对于总量分析，我们必须假设残疾险的申请要处于失业保险金耗尽的前后3个月之内， 然而我们的CPS分析却仅仅可以探测出那些导致在相同的日历年度内收款的早于失业保险金耗尽的残疾险申请。也许存在着更长时滞的影响—失业保险金耗尽者可能在申请SSDI之前等待六个月或更长时间，或者机构在最初可能不成比例地拒绝对耗尽者的授予，这些可能性意味着不能完全排除二者之间的因果关系。
尽管如此，这里的分析不支持存在这样一种联系的可能性，它更倾向于支持DI申请反周期性的其他解释。例如，循环模式也许仅仅反映了失业工人的潜在重新雇用工资的变动(Davis and von Wachter 2011) 或那些影响对申请者就业能力组间平方和的估计的轻微残疾者的就业机会变化。这些解释相对于失业保险金耗尽和残疾险申请之间的联系而言也许有截然不同的政策含义，然而这并不是清晰的，比如，更严格的功能能力测评会减少衰退引起的残疾险申请，如果这些申请反映了测评者对于申请者在现期劳动力市场上的确不适宜雇佣的判断。
（By 杨帆) |
