Job Demands and Social Security Disability Insurance Applications
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Abstract
We use data from the Health and Retirement Study to identify the effect of job demands on applications for Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income benefits and to assess whether these job demands have been changing among older (ages 51 to 61) workers. We find that workers in jobs with physical demands — physical effort, stooping, heavy lifting — are more likely to apply for disability benefits, controlling for workers’ age, education, marital status, and health. We find that other job characteristics that we can measure — requiring good eyesight, concentration, and dealing with people; and being stressful and becoming more difficult — have little effect on disability benefit applications. We do not find a reduction in the physical demands of jobs held by older workers over our 1992 to 2016 sample period. When we control for workers’ education, they have increased. More in line with expectations, we find older workers’ jobs increasingly require good eyesight, concentration, and dealing with people, and weaker trend increases in stressfulness or increasing difficulty of the job. Together, these findings suggest that changing job requirements are unlikely to be an important driver of changing disability benefits applications in the foreseeable future.
Key Findings
- Using workers reports to measure their working conditions, those in jobs with physical demands such as physical effort, stooping or heavy lifting are more likely to apply for Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income benefits than other workers who have the same education, physical health, and age.
- Workers in jobs with demands that we often associate with white collar jobs, such as requiring good eyesight, concentration, and dealing with people are not more likely to apply for benefits.
- Workers in jobs that they perceive as stressful or becoming more difficult are not more likely to apply for benefits.
- We find no evidence that the jobs of older workers are becoming less physically demanding. Conditional on education attainment, they are becoming physically more demanding.
- Older workers’ jobs increasingly require good eyesight, concentration, and dealing with people, and we find weaker trend increases in stressfulness or increasing difficulty of the job.
- Together, these findings suggest that changing job requirements are unlikely to be an important driver of changing disability benefits applications in the foreseeable future.
Citation
Brown, Charles, John Bound, and Chichun Fang. 2023. “Job Demands and Social Security Disability Insurance Applications.” Ann Arbor, MI. University of Michigan Retirement and Disability Research Center (MRDRC) Working Paper; MRDRC WP 2023-461. https://mrdrc.isr.umich.edu/publications/papers/pdf/wp461.pdf
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Paper ID
WP 2023-461Publication Type
Working Paper