The Interaction of Workforce Development Programs and Unemployment Compensation by Individuals with Diabilities in Washington State

The report addresses a gap in the research literature by considering the following question: With so many people with disabilities unemployed, to what extend do individuals with disabilities receive Unemployment Insurance benefits? As a means of building a more complete understanding of the rate at which people with disabilities access the UI benefits system, the report examines the extent to which people with disabilities in Washington State use the public workforce system and the rate at which those who use it become employed after receiving services

Workers' Compensation Insurance In North America: Lessons for Victoria?

Among the issues we will consider here are the following. Who carries the underwriting(insurance) risk for workers' compensation benefits? How is workers' compensation insuranceprices, and by whom? What fundamental principles guide the insurance pricing system? Whomonitors benefits for compliance with statutory requirements? Are the availability of coverageand the payment of insurers' claims obligations guaranteed? Is self-insurance allowed and, if so, for whom? How are incentives for prevention of accidents, and resulting workers' compensation claims, maintained? What is the performance of the overall system? In summary, how are these questions answered and what so the answers reveal about how these responsibilities are allocated among government agencies, other public entities and private firms

How Working age People with Disabilities Fared over the 1990s Business Cycle

Using data from the March Current Population Survey (CPS) we show that while the longest peacetime economic expansion in United States history has increased the economic well-being of most Americans, the majority of working age men and women with disabilities have been left behind. Robust economic growth since the recession of the early 1990s has lifted nearly all percentiles of the income distribution of working age men and men without disabilities beyond their previous business cycle peak levels of 1989. In contrast, the majority of working age men and women with disabilities did not share in economic growth over this period. Not only did their employment and labor earnings fall during the recession of the early 1990s but their employment and earnings continued to fall during the economic expansion that followed

Workers' Compensation Under Alternative Insurance Arrangements

The authors use a unique panel data set of state-level data for 48 jurisdictions between 1975 and 1995 to explore the effects of insurance arrangements on workplace safety, the structure of the workers' compensation insurance market, and the employers' costs of workers' compensation insurance. In addition, we examine the trade-off between the benefit adequacy and affordability objectives of state workers' compensation programs and estimate the impact that the imposition of federal standards for benefit adequacy would have on workers' compensation costs

The Third Way: Prevention and Compensation of Work Injury in Victoria, Australia

This study originated because the leadership of the VWA and the responsible Minister wanted an assessment of the performance of the Victorian scheme within a larger perspective. They commissioned the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, an endowed, not-forprofit research foundation in the United States, to assemble an appropriate team of workers' compensation experts to conduct such a study. The assignment was to carry out a thorough, independent review of the Victorian system of prevention and compensation for work injuries and to provide a set of informed judgments about the system and its performance

Contrasting the Employment of Single Mothers and People with Disabilities

The transition of single women with children off the welfare rolls and into employment (see Figures 1 and 2) in the 1990s has been described as “stunning” by leading policy researchers (see, for instance, Blank 2002). The authors in The Decline in Employment of People with Disabilities: A Policy Puzzle (Stapleton and Burkhauser 2003) document and analyze an equally stunning transition of working-age people with disabilities out of the workforce and onto disability income support programs (see Figures 1 and 2), despite the upsurge in government rhetoric proclaiming increased employment and economic independence as a primary policy goal. Employment and program participation trends for both populations departed sharply from trends in the prior decade

Three Systems of Workers' Compensation

Only three countries in the world maintain sub-national workers' compensation systems:Australia, Canada, and the United States. Three models are used to organize the insuranceresponsibilities for making the payments to injured or ill workers: private market, exclusivepublic insurer, and mixed (although the three models do not correspond exactly with the threecountries).All 10 Canadian provinces, 6 U.S. states, and 3 jurisdictions in Australia use the exclusive public insurer approach; the remaining 44 U.S. states and 4 jurisdictions in Australiause a predominately private market approach; and 3 Australian states use a mixed approach, in hich the public fund bears the underwriting risk, but private firms collect and disburse themoney.We will look at each of the three models, one from each country.1 Studying differentjurisdictions, even though from different nations, follows the tradition of using the "laboratory ofthe states" to inform policy decisions. We will describe the essential features of each system and then review system performance

Vernon Briggs: Real-World Labor Economist

[Excerpt] Vernon Briggs stepped into a wastebasket and launched my career as a labor economist. In the spring of 1969, I was sleepwalking through the undergraduate economics program at the University of Texas and sitting in Dr. Briggs’s labor economics class. He was vigorously making a point when his misstep off the small classroom stage produced a roar of laughter but did not break his train of thought. He woke me up; I thought, “Man, I want to be as passionate about my life’s work as this guy

Washington Pension System Review

The purpose of this study is to analyze the incidence of Total Permanent Disability (TPD)pensions in Washington State's workers' compensation program. Concerns exist at both thelegislature and in the Department of Labor and Industries as there appears to have been a sharp upturn in the number of pensions awarded since late in the 1990s. This report examines the factors that may be causally related to any upsurge in such awards. Our task is to evaluate pension incidence for both the state fund and the self-insured populations, with a view towards identifying causes of the trend in both sectors, although we concentrate more on the state fund Cclaims due to data limitations

The Returns to Education and Basic Skills Training for Individuals with Poor Health or Disability

This paper examines linkages between disability and health status and the returns to education and basic skills training. It bases analyses on two separate data sources: wave 3 from the 1993 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and the 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS). The data sets have been used to estimate standard wage equations with education and basic skills training among the independent variables. The NALS data set allows us to control for prose, quantitative, and document literacy. The wage equations rely on Heckit corrections for labor force participation, and we stratify by sex. We also estimate the wage equations stratifying by disability status (also with an appropriate econometric correction) to permit the coefficient estimates on all the regressors to vary by disability status. Overall, we find that the returns to education for individuals with a disability or poor health are positive, although of moderate size and equal to the returns for the nondisabled population. The findings suggest supply side policy options that maintain or improve access to and retention in educational opportunities are indicated. Basic skills training seems to be especially advantageous for some individual