AN NBER PUBLICATION
ISSUE: No. 4, December 2020
The Bulletin on Retirement and Disability
A free digital quarterly summarizing research in the NBER's Retirement and Disability Research Center
The Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program provides cash benefits and access to Medicaid to 1.3 million low-income children in the US with physical, mental, and behavioral disabilities. Supporters of the program contend that SSI can improve the long-term outcomes of children by boosting household resources of poor families raising a child with a disability. Critics argue that conditioning benefits on a child’s disability creates perverse incentives for families to...
Article
The relationships between Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) determination, health, and occupation are complex. There are well-documented differences in health by occupation, which may reflect differences in job demands, social class, or selection into certain occupations based on underlying health conditions. In addition, evaluations of SSDI applications are based not only on health, but in many cases also consider age, education, and work experience though the use...
Article
Nearly one in seven US workers is a state or local government employee. These employees are eligible for retirement benefits through about 300 state administered and 6,000 locally administered pension plans, most of which are defined benefit plans.
Many state and local pension plans face a funding gap. Across all plans, the ratio of plan assets to plan liabilities was 72 percent in 2019. Many public sector retirement plans are prohibited by their state constitutions...
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Recently approved papers
NB20-04: The Evolution of Late-Life Income and Assets: Measurement in IRS Tax Data and Three Household Surveys, by James J. Choi, Lucas Goodman, Justin D. Katz, David Laibson, and Shanthi Ramnath
Abstract: Using a 5 percent random sample of administrative IRS tax records covering households born from 1933 to 1952, we evaluate how three widely used household surveys—the Health and Retirement Study, the Survey of Income and Program Participation,...
The Bulletin on Retirement and Disability summarizes selected recent Working Papers. It is distributed digitally to economists and other interested persons for informational and discussion purposes. The Bulletin is not copyrighted and may be reproduced freely with attribution of source.
Working Papers produced as part of the NBER's research program are distributed to make preliminary research results available to economists in the hope of encouraging discussion and suggestions for revision before final publication. Neither Working Papers nor issues of the Bulletin on Retirement and Disability are reviewed by the Board of Directors of the NBER. The Bulletin on Retirement and Disability is edited by Courtney Coile.
Working Papers produced as part of the NBER's research program are distributed to make preliminary research results available to economists in the hope of encouraging discussion and suggestions for revision before final publication. Neither Working Papers nor issues of the Bulletin on Retirement and Disability are reviewed by the Board of Directors of the NBER. The Bulletin on Retirement and Disability is edited by Courtney Coile.