Does Reincarnation Matter?

A "metaphysical perspective" article from Volume I, Issue 1 of the Journal of Metaphysical Thought

Defining Success in Air Force Infrastructure Asset Management through Use of the Delphi Method

Asset Management has a history of policy mandates within the US Government dating back to 1990’s. In order to accomplish these many directives, the Air Force Civil Engineer community has adopted a mindset and framework commonly referred to as Asset Management. Despite numerous references and guidance to establish Asset Management principles, the Air Force has not yet developed a clear and concise way to define or measure overarching success in Asset Management. This research effort focuses on closing the knowledge gap between issued policy and implementation. It examines Asset Management implementation efforts in other government agencies, private industries, and in various countries around the world. Combining this information with interviews from Subject Matter Experts at various levels of the Air Force Civil Engineering structure, this research identifies: current implementation limitations, key elements that constitute and promote success, barriers to success, military-unique opportunities for success, internal success identifiers, ways to promote continuous improvement, and the essential behaviors within Air Force Asset Management. Using this information and recommendations from the Air Force SMEs, suggestions are presented for measuring and incentivizing Asset Management success within an organization. Some of the major findings of this study were the need to develop both a clear definition of what asset management is and an official SAMP for the Air Force. Other findings of this research effort included: the importance of leadership buy-in; complete and accurate facility inventory; and understanding of asset management principles at all levels of the organization

Metaphysical Healing – New Thought or Old?

Article from the Journal of Metaphysical Thought

Does Disability Insurance Receipt Discourage Work? Using Examiner Assignment to Estimate Causal Effects of SSDI Receipt

We present the first causal estimates of the effect of Social Security Disability Insurance benefit receipt on labor supply using all program applicants. We use new administrative data to match applications to disability examiners, and exploit variation in examiners’ allowance rates as an instrument for benefit receipt. We find that among the estimated 23% of applicants on the margin of program entry, employment would have been 28 percentage points higher had they not received benefits. The effect is heterogeneous, ranging from no effect for those with more severe impairments to 50 percentage points for entrants with relatively less severe impairments.Social Security Administrationhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/93591/1/wp241.pd

Disability Insurance and Healthcare Reform: Evidence from Massachusetts

As health insurance becomes available outside of the employment relationship as a result of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the cost of applying for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI)—potentially going without health insurance coverage during a waiting period totaling 29 months from disability onset—will decline for many people with employer-sponsored health insurance. At the same time, the value of SSDI and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) participation will decline for individuals who otherwise lacked access to health insurance. We study the 2006 Massachusetts healthcare reform to estimate the potential effects of the ACA on SSDI and SSI applications.Social Security Administrationhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/102264/1/wp289.pd

Induced Entry into the Social Security Disability Program: Using Past SGA Changes as a Natural Experiment

Working Paper: WP 2012-262The number of American adults receiving benefits from the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program has increased dramatically over the past several decades. A proposed solution to rising program costs is to change program rules to encourage fully or partially recovered SSDI beneficiaries to return to work. One such option is a benefit offset policy, which would reduce SSDI benefits by $1 for every$2 of earned income. While a benefit offset could generate savings from increased labor supply and program exit among current beneficiaries, it could also generate unintended costs if the more generous work rules induce significant numbers of working individuals to apply for benefits. In this paper we examine how past changes in a closely related program parameter, the Substantial Gainful Activity (SGA) threshold, have affected SSDI applications. We exploit changes over time and across states in real relative SGA levels, relative to local average wages. We find that a 7 percentage point (30%) increase in the real relative SGA (on par with the 1999 increase from $500 to$700 per month) was associated with a 4.7% increase in applications.Social Security Administrationhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/93590/1/wp262.pd

WP 2019-400

Understanding how health decline influences retirement decisions is fundamental for the design of targeted policies that encourage working longer. While there is wide agreement on the relevance of age-related health decline for determining labor supply and retirement decisions, the process of how health deterioration affects labor supply remains a black box. This paper explores the match between individuals’ functional abilities and job demands in the national economy using a new methodology to measure work capacity. Specifically, we construct a one-dimensional measure of individuals’ work capacities by comparing an individual’s own ability levels to the levels needed to perform different occupations, using new data containing individuals’ ratings of the same 52 abilities included in the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) database. We find that a one-unit increase in the fraction of jobs for a given education level that an individual can do — our measure of work capacity — is associated with a 15 to 21 percentage point increase in labor force participation, a 10 to 17 percentage point decrease in the percentage of respondents receiving SSDI benefits, a 7 to 10 percentage point increase in the subjective percent chance individuals will work longer, a 9 to 12 percentage point increase in the chance that retired individuals will return to the labor force, and a 17 to 25 percentage point increase in the chance that individuals with disabilities will return to the labor force. The magnitudes of these associations are all economically relevant and exist even when controlling for health status.U.S. Social Security Administration Award RDR18000002, UM19-02; National Institute on Aging Award R01AG056239https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/152118/1/wp400.pdfDescription of wp400.pdf : Working pape

Multistrata exploration and production study

The objective of this project was to develop and verify a geotechnical/geostatistical approach to find natural gas resources and to verify the process by drilling, completing, testing, and producing wells located by the process

The Changing Nature of Work

We provide new evidence on the changing nature of work and its influence on individuals’ capacity to work by linking historical measures of occupational job demands with harmonized data on individual abilities from a unique survey conducted in the RAND American Life Panel in 2018. We start by examining how job demands have evolved over time between 2003 and 2018 for different dimensions of abilities (cognitive, physical, sensory and psychomotor), overall and by educational group. We then decompose job demand changes into within-occupation changes and changes in the economy’s distribution of occupations. Finally, we provide evidence on how individuals’ work capacities have evolved over time due to job demand changes.U.S. Social Security Administration, RDR18000002-02, UM20-03http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/168226/1/wp415.pdfDescription of wp415.pdf : working paperSEL