TY - JOUR AU - Milligan, Kevin AU - Schirle, Tammy TI - Push and Pull: Disability Insurance, Regional Labor Markets, and Benefit Generosity in Canada and the United States JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 23405 PY - 2017 Y2 - May 2017 DO - 10.3386/w23405 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w23405 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w23405.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Kevin S. Milligan Vancouver School of Economics University of British Columbia 6000 Iona Drive Vancouver, BC V6T 1L4 CANADA E-Mail: kevin.milligan@ubc.ca Tammy Schirle Department of Economics Wilfrid Laurier University 75 University Avenue West Waterloo ON N2L 3C5 CANADA E-Mail: tschirle@wlu.ca M1 - published as Kevin S. Milligan, Tammy Schirle. "Push and Pull: Disability Insurance, Regional Labor Markets, and Benefit Generosity in Canada and the United States," in Philip Oreopoulos and David Card, organizers, "Small Differences II: Public Policies in Canada and the United States" The University of Chicago Press, Journal of Labor Economics volume 37, S2 (2019) AB - Disability insurance take-up has expanded substantially in the past twenty years in the United States while shrinking in Canada. We empirically assess these trends by measuring the strength of the ‘push’ from weak labor markets versus the ‘pull’ of more generous benefits. Using an instrumental variables strategy comparing benefit changes across country, age, and year, we find that both benefits and regional wages matter. Simulations suggest that the upswing in disability insurance take-up in the United States would be reversed, dropping the caseload by one third, if benefits and wages had followed the growth path observed in Canada. ER -