TY  - JOUR
AU  - Soest,Arthur van
AU  - Andreyeva,Tatiana
AU  - Kapteyn,Arie
AU  - Smith,James P.
TI  - Self Reported Disability and Reference Groups
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 17153
PY  - 2011
Y2  - June 2011
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17153
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17153.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Arthur van Soest
Tilburg University
P.O. Box 90153
5000 LE Tilburg
The Netherlands
E-Mail: avas@uvt.nl

Tatiana Andreyeva
Yale University
Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity
309 Edwards Street
New Haven, CT 06520
Tel: (203) 432-8432
Fax: (203) 432-9674
E-Mail: tatiana.andreyeva@yale.edu

Arie Kapteyn
12015 Waterfront Drive
Playa Vista, CA 90094-2536
Tel: 310/448-5383
E-Mail: kapteyn@usc.edu

James P. Smith
RAND Corporation
1776 Main Street
P.O. Box 2138
Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138
Tel: 310-451-6925
E-Mail: smith@rand.org
M3  - presented at "Aging Conference", May 6-7, 2011
AB  - Social networks and social interactions affect individual and social norms. We develop a direct test of this using Dutch survey data on how respondents evaluate work disability of hypothetical people with some work related health problem (vignettes). We analyze how the thresholds respondents use to decide what constitutes a (mild or more serious) work disability depend on the number of people receiving disability insurance benefits (DI) in their reference group. We find that reference group effects are significant and contribute substantially to an explanation of why self-reported work disability in the Netherlands is much higher than in, for example, the US.
ER  -