Economic Policy Commons^™

The Importance Of Employer Accommodation On The Job Duration Of Workers With Disabilities: A Hazard Model Approach, Richard V. Burkhauser, J.S. Butler, Yang Woo Kim

Center for Policy Research

In line with policies long in place in Western Europe, United States disability policy is now attempting to intervene directly in the labor market to increase the employment of people with disabilities. Beginning in July, 1992, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 required employers to provide reasonable accommodation to workers with disabilities. Here we use a continuous time hazard model on retrospective data from the 1978 Social Security Survey of Disability and Work to estimate the effect of employer accommodation on the subsequent job tenure of workers who suffer a work limiting health impairment. We show that the risk …

A Symbolic Balanced Budget Amendment, Neal Devins

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Housing The Homeless Through Expanding Access To Existing Housing Subsidies, Barbara Sard

New England Journal of Public Policy

The premise of this article is that homelessness in America today is essentially a product of the lack of affordable housing for very low-income people. The article outlines this central income/housing gap analysis as the factual predicate of the goal to alleviate homelessness through securing subsidized housing resources for the homeless and imminently homeless. It explains why, based on the nature and number of annually available housing subsidies, expanding access to existing housing subsidies is a valuable, workable, short-term, at least partial solution to the immediate crisis of lack of affordable housing, albeit one which does not negate the acknowledged …

Build Homes Not Bombs: Get A Better Economy To Boot!, Richard Krushnic

New England Journal of Public Policy

Our nation has a rare opportunity to shift resources from military to civilian activities for the next few years. A budget pact is supposed to prevent transfers of funds from the military to domestic programs during fiscal years 1992 and 1993, but the pact is cracking in light of the sudden collapse of the Soviet military and the dismemberment of the Soviet Union. While jobs are lost when funds are shifted out of the military, the funds don't disappear - they are used for alternative federal expenditures, paying federal debt, or tax reduction. Many alternative expenditure patterns are available to …

The Housing Crisis Enters The 1990s, Peter Dreier, Richard Appelbaum

New England Journal of Public Policy

Homelessness in the United States is a symptom of a much deeper economic and housing crisis — a widening gap between incomes and housing prices. With the end of the Cold War, the nation has the resources to solve these problems, but to do so it must mobilize the political will. This article examines the roots of crisis, the public policies and market forces that created it, and policy recommendations to solve the problem. Key to forging a solution is building the political coalition needed to create a broad public consensus.

It'll Take More Than A Miracle: Income In Single-Mother Families In Massachusetts, 1979-1987, Chris Tilly, Randy Albelda

McCormack Graduate School General Publications (active until 2013)

Through the 1980s, the Massachusetts economy grew rapidly. Most Massachusetts families benefited from this economic boom, and saw their incomes rise much more rapidly than the U.S. average. But Massachusetts single mothers and their children, who started out with lower incomes than other families, experienced only minimal income growth, and fell further behind other families in the Bay State. In this paper, we analyze income differences among family types in Massachusetts. We pay special attention to the problems of single mothers, and offer a set of policy recommendations to address these problems.

In order to undertake this analysis, we classify …

Reality Or Illusion: The Importance Of Creaming On Job Placement Rates In Job Training Partnership Act Programs, Kathryn H. Anderson, Richard V. Burkhauser, Jennie E. Raymond

Center for Policy Research

Critics of the Job Partnership Training Act of 1982 (JTPA) argue that most of its job placement success has been the result of the "creaming" of participants--that is, of serving individuals who are most employable at the expense of those most in need. Using a bivariate probit model of JTPA trainee selection and job placement success, this paper analyzes the selection of JTPA past recipients. It provides a first approximation of the importance of nonrandom selection on job placement rates. Creaming is found to take place within service delivery areas (SDAs), especially with respect to the avoidance of eligible high …

W(H)Ither The Middle Class? A Dynamic View, Greg J. Duncan, Timothy M, Smeeding, Willard Rodgers

Center for Policy Research

A constant theme throughout the history of the U.S. has been the growth of the middle class and the promise of its growth for the elimination of poverty. By the late 1980s, social analysts sensed a decline in the size of the American middle class which later was verified through cross-section analysis of wage and salary and income distribution data. Using time series from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics for prime-age males, this study moves beyond verification of the shrinking of the middle class. The analysis examines changes in both income and wealth and finds that wealth increases reinforced …

How People With Disabilities Fare When Public Policies Change--Past, Present, And Future, Richard V. Burkhauser, Robert H. Haveman, Barbara L. Wolfe

Center for Policy Research

In this paper the authors analyze the effects of two decades of federal disability policy and macroeconomic fluctuation on the well-being of men with disabilities. Their findings indicate that both have dramatically affected the economic well-being of people with disabilities both absolutely and relative to people without disabilities. Using data from the Current Population Survey (19681988) they find that by 1987 the households of white or well-educated male heads with disabilities had fully recovered from the program cuts and recession of the early 1980s. However, to a large extent this recovery was due to additional earnings by spouses. Alternatively, the …

Modeling Application For Disability Insurance As A Retirement Decision: A Hazard Model Approach Using Choice-Based Sampling, Richard V. Burkhauser, J.S. Butler, Yang Woo Kim, George A. Slotsve

Center for Policy Research

This paper models the decision to apply for Social Security Disability Insurance Benefitsas a special case of a more general dynamic retirement decision model. It uses a multi-state, continuous-time hazard to test the effect of policy variables on the speed at which workers applyfor benefits following the onset of a work limitation. Policy variables are found to matter. A higher expected replacement rate increases the risk of application. This effect is significant in asmall sample of the general population and in a sample which also includes a weighted choice-based sample of disability insurance applicants.

A Cautionary Tale Of European Disability Policies: Lessons For The United States, Leo Arts, Richard V. Burkhauser, Philip De Jong

Center for Policy Research

Variations in the size of the population receiving disability payments across countries cannot be explained by simple differences in health. Rather, the process to disability is shaped by both social and medical factors. When governments ignore this reality, a policy generated disability epidemic is possible. This paper compares disability policies in The Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, and the United States. It argues that the extraordinary increase in Dutch disability rolls in the 1970s was caused by a general government policy to reduce official unemployment. And that by the end of the 1980s, this policy had left Holland with a hidden unemployment …

Disability Or Work: Handicap Policy Choices, Richard V. Burkhauser

Center for Policy Research

Cross-national comparisons of disability programs and disabled populations show that the social environment workers with handicaps face can be as important as their health in affecting their movement into disability. In this context, Richard Burkhauser reviews American disability policy over the business cycles of the past two decades. He finds that strong economic recovery has, in general, overcome the sharp drop in the well-being of people with handicaps brought on by the recession and the reduction in program benefits in the early 1980s. However, the doubly handicapped, those with both health limitations and poor work skills, have not recovered.