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Essays on the Economics of Disability
Easterday, Michael
Easterday, Michael
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Abstract
This dissertation contributes to our understanding of various outcomes for people with disabilities. The academic literature shows ample evidence that disability is associated with low economic security, and many anecdotal sources note that previous attempts at helping people with disabilities have been insufficient. This dissertation uses a variety of policies from important safety net agencies, data sources, and methods to examine how policies and changing workplaces affect people with disabilities and how disability affects those outside the safety net.The first chapter examines whether state Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) policies affect SNAP access for senior citizens and people with disabilities, a group particularly at risk for economic insecurity. This chapter uses the SNAP Policy Database and State Options Reports to examine variation in state SNAP policies and combines them with the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to see if there is causal evidence that these policies support or disproportionately restrict people with disabilities and senior citizens from receiving SNAP benefits. Results indicate that generosity policies increase SNAP participation while restrictive policies reduce participation, and the magnitudes of these coefficients are larger for older adults and people with disabilities compared to the general population. This chapter is coauthored with Donna Ginther.The second chapter focuses on the effect of disability on the employment and earnings of high-skilled workers. This chapter uses the panel subset of the 2010-2015 National Survey of College Graduates (NSCG). In addition to asking the standard questions about functional difficulties, the NSCG also asks when these difficulties first started, allowing an event study analysis of the effects of disability as time since onset increases. This chapter finds that severe disabilities have immediate and persistent negative effects on hours worked and probability of employment over 30 years, while a more inclusive definition of disability shows a gradual downward trend that becomes noticeable different from zero after 15 years.The final chapter studies the effect that industrial robotics have on disability and Disability Insurance (DI) claims. This chapter combines data from many sources, including robotics data from the International Federation of Robotics, international trade data from Comtrade, and individual level disability and DI receipt from the American Community Survey. This chapter uses variation in local exposure to robotics, along with the prevalence of robotics in foreign countries as an instrumental variable, to identify the effect on disability in the US. It also uses an event study model to observe different effects over time. Results indicate that an increased presence of robotics decreases both DI receipt and self-reported disability, and these effects grow over time.
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Date
2023-01-01
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University of Kansas
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This item contains archived web content.
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1017238_1.pdf
Adobe PDF, 1.07 MB
- Embargoed until 2173-05-31
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Keywords
Economics, Disability, Economics, I23, I38, J14, J18