The welfare implications of increasing disability insurance benefit generosity

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bound, J; Cullen, JB; Nichols, A; Schmidt, L
• 署名单位: University of Michigan System; University of Michigan; National Bureau of Economic Research; Williams College
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2003.07.007
• 发表日期: 2004
• 页码: 2487-2514
• 关键词: Disability insurance; labor supply disincentives; income security

摘要

In order to evaluate whether workers are over- or under-insured through the Disability Insurance (DI) program, we develop a framework that allows us to simulate the benefits as well as the costs associated with marginal changes in payment generosity from a representative cross-sectional sample of the population. Under the assumption that individuals are reasonably risk averse, we find that the typical worker would value increased benefits somewhat above the average costs of providing them. However, whether the benefit increases tend to lower or raise utility when we average across all individuals in our sample is sensitive to assumptions that affect the relative marginal utility of income to disabled individuals. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.