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.

Exploring the Role of Microbiota in the Development of Insulin-producing Cells in Drosophila melanogaster

30 pagesResident microbiotas can influence many aspects of host health and disease. Previous research by the Guillemin lab shows that in zebrafish and mice, gut microbiota promotes the expansion of insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas through a secreted bacterial protein, beta-cell expansion factor A (BefA). This research investigates the role of microbiota, bacteria, and BefA protein to promote analogous insulin-producing cell (IPC) development in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. In Drosophila, 7 insulin-producing cells are present in each lobe of the larval brain. This research first established the effect of germ-free (GF) rearing on IPC numbers in Drosophila. The second and third aims tested if feeding flies BefA or if transgenic expression of BefA could restore insulin-producing cell numbers in germ-free flies. We compared the number of insulin-producing cells present in flies that were germ-free, conventionally reared (CV), germ-free and fed BefA protein, and germ-free flies with transgenic expression of BefA. Tissue-specific Dilp3:GAL4/UAS:GFP in all groups made insulin-producing cells visible after dissection and immunohistochemistry. Results showed that germ-free flies have fewer insulin-producing cells per brain lobe than conventional flies, indicating that microbiota is required for normal insulin-producing cell number and development. Further, germ-free larvae fed BefA protein showed a slight but significant increase in insulin-producing cells per lobe compared to conventional, indicating that BefA has the potential to rescue the effects of germ-free treatment. Transgenic expression of BefA, using the GAL4/UAS system, yielded a trending rescue of insulin-producing cells in germ-free flies, possibly due to lower levels of BefA produced through transgenic expression than via feeding. Results indicate that resident microbiota has a powerful effect on Drosophila metabolic pathways and fundamentally affects cell development, including cells in the gut-brain axis. This information can be used to direct research and treatment for diseases like diabetes, helps researchers better understand growth and development, and has implications for the microbiota’s effect on the brain. Future experiments include a developmental assay aimed at further investigating the properties of BefA and other similar bacterial proteins, including testing the hypothesis that BefA’s membrane permeabilizing properties induce insulin-producing cell expansion

Does Delay Cause Decay? The Effect of Administrative Decision Time on the Labor Force Participation and Earnings of Disability Applicants

An influential body of research studies the labor supply and earnings of denied Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) applicants to estimate the potential employment and earnings of those awarded benefits. This research design implicitly treats employability as a stable applicant attribute that is not directly impacted by the process of applying for SSDI benefits. If, plausibly, applicants’ employment potential deteriorates while they are out of the labor force, then the labor force participation of denied applicants -- who spend an average of 10 months seeking benefits -- may understate their employment potential at the time of application. This paper tests whether the duration of SSDI applications causally affects applicants’ subsequent employment. We use a unique Social Security Administration workload database to identify exogenous variation in applicants’ initial decision times induced by differences in processing speed among the disability examiners to which they are randomly assigned. This variation significantly affects applicants’ total processing time but, importantly, is uncorrelated with their initial award and denial outcomes. We find that longer processing times reduce the employment and earnings of SSDI applicants in the years after their initial decision. A one standard deviation (2.4 month) increase in initial processing time reduces annual employment rates by 1 percentage point (3.2%) in years two, three and four post-decision. Extrapolating these effects to total applicant processing times, we estimate that the SSDI determination process directly reduces the post-application employment of denied applicants by approximately 3.6 percentage points (7%) and allowed applicants by approximately 5.2 percentage points (33%).Social Security Administrationhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/90514/1/wp258.pd

Attitudes Towards End-of-life Care: An Educational Intervention in Long-term Care

Background: Nursing assistants provide the most consistent care to dying patients in long-term care facilities; however, they receive little training to do so. Nursing assistants are significant, yet under recognized members of the health care team. Purpose: To provide a brief educational intervention to nursing assistants in long-term care facilities with a goal of increasing comfort and improving attitudes towards caring for palliative care patients. Review of Evidence: Symptom management, stress related to the role as a provider, goals of care, time limitations, and fear, are the most significant challenges nursing assistants experience. Few studies have examined education, age, and years of experience as contributing factors that may influence a nursing assistant’s attitudes towards end-of-life care. Project Design: A pre- and post-test design was used to evaluate the impact of an educational session on the attitudes of nursing assistants towards end-of-life care. Methods: A paper survey and brief educational session was provided to a convenience sample of nursing assistants in four long-term care facilities in the Southeastern United States (N=42). Results: Nursing assistants had more positive attitudes after the educational intervention (p \u3c.001, d= 0.5678). There was a potential relationship between age and attitudes (p = .105, η2= .124), however, years of experience was not a statistically significant variable (p = .642, η2= .050). Conclusion: Additional education is warranted to improve attitudes and knowledge for nursing assistants to influence overall quality of care provided to residents at end-of-life

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

We present the first estimates of the causal effects of SSDI receipt on labor supply that are generalizable to the entire population of program entrants in the present day system. We take advantage of a unique workload management database to match Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) applicants to disability examiners, and use natural variation in examiners’ allowance rates to estimate the labor supply effects of SSDI. Because applicants are randomly assigned to examiners (conditional on observable characteristics), examiner specific allowance rates can be used to instrument for the allowance decision in a labor supply equation contrasting denied vs. allowed applicants. We find that the labor force participation rate of the marginal entrant would be on average 21 percentage points greater in the absence of SSDI benefit receipt. His or her likelihood of engaging in substantial gainful activity as defined by the SSDI program would be on average 13 percentage points higher, and he or she would earn $1,600 to$2,600 more per year on average in the absence of SSDI benefit receipt. The marginal entrant is likely to have a mental impairment, be young, and have low pre-onset earnings. Importantly, the disincentive effect varies across individuals with impairments of different degrees of unobservable severity, ranging from a low of 10 percentage points for those with more severe impairments to a high of 60 percentage points for entrants with relatively less severe impairments.Social Security Administrationhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78733/1/wp241.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78733/4/wp241.pd

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

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

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

Plant Peroxisomes: Biogenesis and Function

Peroxisomes are eukaryotic organelles that are highly dynamic both in morphology and metabolism. Plant peroxisomes are involved in numerous processes, including primary and secondary metabolism, development, and responses to abiotic and biotic stresses. Considerable progress has been made in the identification of factors involved in peroxisomal biogenesis, revealing mechanisms that are both shared with and diverged from non-plant systems. Furthermore, recent advances have begun to reveal an unexpectedly large plant peroxisomal proteome and have increased our understanding of metabolic pathways in peroxisomes. Coordination of the biosynthesis, import, biochemical activity, and degradation of peroxisomal proteins allows for highly dynamic responses of peroxisomal metabolism to meet the needs of a plant. Knowledge gained from plant peroxisomal research will be instrumental to fully understanding the organelleﾒs dynamic behavior and defining peroxisomal metabolic networks, thus allowing the development of molecular strategies for rational engineering of plant metabolism, biomass production, stress tolerance, and pathogen defense

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