Agenda

Chiara Campana (Ca' Foscari University of Venice & Vrije Universiteit) - Does Stricter Disability Screening Lead to Improved Targeting on Long-term Health and Employment Outcomes?

Abstract:

While evidence points at potentially strong effects of tightening eligibility criteria for Disability Insurance (DI), little is known about their targeting effects: are workers screened out also those with better future employment, health and mortality outcomes? Knowing that DI receipt is mostly permanent for workers, it is key to understand the permanence of impairments and their implications for the ability to work. To shed light on this, we employ Regression-Discontinuity-in-Time regressions to compare the long-term health and mortality outcomes of DI application cohorts just before and after a reform in the Netherlands. This reform led to stricter screening in the sickness period before DI application and reduced the number of applicants by 33%. Up to 18 years after application, we find persistently lower survival rates, higher medical expenditure and lower employment rates of post-reform cohorts. Using detailed information on the future chronic diseases of these cohorts, we next construct a Chronic Disease Index (CDI) that explains survival rates and a Work Ability Index (WAI) that explains long-term employment rates. Inferences on changes in the CDI show that compliers to the reform have health conditions with high expected survival rates (i.e. high CDI-scores). For employment (the WAI), however, screening effects were less substantial. This reflects the effect of reduced applications from screened out workers with (mental) health conditions, having low mortality rates and relatively limited ability to work.

The seminar can be attended also remotely, connecting to ZOOM.

Link Zoom: bit.ly/insem-2425
ID riunione:  880 2639 9452
Passcode: InSem-2425