SOCIAL SECURITY AND RETIREES’ DECISION TO WORK

Non-linearities in the Social Security benefits formula are used to estimate the effect of benefit size on the probability married beneficiaries work after initiating benefits. Consistent with economic theory, benefit size has a significant, negative effect on the probability of post-retirement work. A 10% increase in benefit size decreases the probability of work 3-4 percentage points for recently retired husbands (from a mean of 25.5%) and 2-3 percentage points for recently retired wives (from a mean of 12.8%). For both spouses, the effect erodes in later years of retirement.Social Security, retirement, labor supply

Form & Reform: The Economic Realities of the United States Healthcare System

Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Eric Steiger, I\u27m one of the editors-in-chief from the Journal of Law and Health. And I\u27m happy to welcome all of you to the second speaker event in the 2009/2010 Journal of Law and Health Speaker Series. Thank you all for coming. Now, I know that the news last week was dominated by the story of Sandra Bullock\u27s breakup; however, some of you might have noticed that a small piece of minor legislation also got passed through Congress last week. And you also might have noticed that it wasn\u27t quite as full of bipartisan support as it otherwise might have been. And so, the real question: Could it have been? What would such legislation have looked like? And what\u27s the real difference between that and what we have now? And in order to help us answer that question, we have Professor Mark Vortuba from Case Western Reserve\u27s Weatherhead School of Management with us. Professor Vortuba has written on the allocation of medical resources, incentives for care, insurance markets, the effects of plant closings on communities, parental job loss and the link between divorced non-resident fathers\u27 proximity and children\u27s long-run outcomes. He has a P.h.D from Princeton University, and we\u27re proud to have him here today. Everybody please give a warm welcome to Professor Mark Vortuba

Social Interaction Effects in Disability Pension Participation: Evidence from Plant Downsizing

.disability; downsizing; layoffs; plant closing; social insurance; social interaction; welfare norms

Effects of Neighborhood Characteristics on the Mortality of Black Male Youth: Evidence From Gautreaux

The Gautreaux data for this paper were created with the assistance of the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities under special agreement with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the National Center for Health Statistics. Generous support for data construction and analysis was provided by Daniel Rose and the MIT Center for Real Estate, the National Bureau of Economic Research, the National Science Foundation (SBE-9876337), the Princeton Center for Economic Policy Studies, and the Princeton Industrial Relations Section. Technical support was provided by the Princeton Office of Population Research (NICHD 5P30-HD32030) and the Princeton Center for Health and Wellbeing. Mortality count data for male youth residing in Chicago community areas were graciously provided by the Illinois Center for Health Statistics. We thank Greg Duncan and members of the Princeton Industrial Relations Section for helpful comments.Neighborhood effects; Mortality

Effects of Neighborhood Characteristics on the Mortality of Black Male Youth: Evidence From Gautreaux

neighborhood effects, mortality

Divorced Fathers' Proximity and Children's Long Run Outcomes: Evidence from Norwegian Registry Data

This study examines the link between divorced nonresident fathers' proximity and children's long-run outcomes using high-quality data from Norwegian population registers. We follow (from birth to young adulthood) 15,992 children born into married households in Norway in the years 1975-1979 whose parents divorce during his or her childhood. We observe the proximity of the child to his or her father in each year following the divorce and link proximity to children's educational and economic outcomes in young adulthood, controlling for a wide range of observable characteristics of the parents and the child. Our results show that closer proximity to the father following a divorce has, on average, a modest negative association with offspring's young-adult outcomes. The negative associations are stronger among children of highly-educated fathers. Complementary Norwegian survey data show that highly-educated fathers report more post-divorce conflict with their ex-wives as well as more contact with their children (measured in terms of the number of nights that the child spends at the fathers' house). Consequently, the father's relocation to a more distant location following the divorce may shelter the child from disruptions in the structure of the child's life as they split time between households and/or from post-divorce interparental conflict.fathers' proximity, divorce, child development, long-run outcomes, relocation

Divorced fathers’ proximity and children’s long run outcomes: Evidence from Norwegian registry data

.Child development; divorce; fathers' proximity; long-run outcomes; relocation

Nobody Home: The Effect of Maternal Labor Force Participation on Long-Term Child Outcomes

We investigate how mother's employment during childhood affects long term child outcomes. We utilize rich longitudinal data from Norway covering the entire Norwegian population between the years 1970 to 2007. The data allows us to match all family members and to measure maternal labor force participation throughout the child's entire childhood. Our empirical approach exploits the variation in exposure to a working mother that exists across older and younger siblings in different family types. We compare sibling differences in families where the mother enters the labor force when the children are older and where the mother remains employed full time thereafter, to sibling differences in families where the mother remains out of the labor force during the entirety of her children's adolescent years. Our identification strategy is, therefore, in the spirit of traditional difference-in-differences, the first difference pertaining to the differences in children's ages within a family and the second pertaining to different family types. The analysis suggests that maternal labor force participation has significant and negative effects on years of education and labor market outcomes. However, the effects are small, which supports the notion that maternal labor force participation has, on average, a small effect on long-term outcomes for children

Organizational Economics and Physician Practices

Economists seeking to improve the efficiency of health care delivery frequently emphasize two issues: the fragmented structure of physician practices and poorly designed physician incentives. This paper analyzes these issues from the perspective of organizational economics. We begin with a brief overview of the structure of physician practices and observe that the long anticipated triumph of integrated care delivery has largely gone unrealized. We then analyze the special problems that fragmentation poses for the design of physician incentives. Organizational economics suggests some promising incentive strategies for this setting, but implementing these strategies is complicated by norms of autonomy in the medical profession and by other factors that inhibit effective integration between hospitals and physicians. Compounding these problems are patterns of medical specialization that complicate coordination among physicians. We conclude by considering the policy implications of our analysis - paying particular attention to proposed Accountable Care Organizations.