NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH

Early Retirement and Public Disability Insurance Applications: Exploring the Impact of Depression

Rena M. Conti, Ernst R. Berndt, Richard G. Frank

NBER Working Paper No. 12237*
Issued in May 2006
NBER Program(s):   AG    HC    PE

The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this.  You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email.

This paper investigates the impact of depression on labor force participation among older workers. Empirically, we use two analytic strategies and rely on a sample drawn from the Health and Retirement Survey. Depression directly and indirectly increases individuals’ probability of retiring early and applying for DI benefits, after accounting for other predictors of labor force exit. Accounting for the independent effects of depression, disability associated with physical illness may be smaller than the official statistics suggest. There may be great economic gains in increasing depression treatment awareness and access to treatment for individuals, employers and society.

You may purchase this paper on-line in .pdf format from SSRN.com ($5) for electronic delivery.

Information about Free Papers

You should expect a free download if you are a subscriber, a corporate associate of the NBER, a journalist, a site with your domain name in ".GOV", or a resident of nearly any developing country or transition economy.

If you usually get free papers at work/university but do not at home, you can either connect to your work VPN or proxy (if any) or elect to have a link to the paper emailed to your work email address below. The email address must be connected to a subscribing college, university, or other subscribing institution. Gmail and other free email addresses will not have access.

E-mail:

Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX

 
Publications
Activities
Meetings
Data
People
About

National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138; 617-868-3900; email: info@nber.org