Search results

Labor-market discrimination measures are usually derived from between-group comparisons of market outcomes for favored versus disfavored groups, controlling for productivity-related individual characteristics. When the disfavored group is heterogeneous, one can relate variations in discrimination intensity to market outcomes within the disfavored group. We use this approach to test for employment and wage discrimination against persons with various types of disabilities. Measures of ‘social distance” and employer judgments of “employability” are controls for the intensity of discrimination. In a national sample of adults with serious disabilities, employment discrimination effects are in the “wrong” direction, however, and wage effects are unstable. Thus, variability in labor market outcomes among different types of disabilities is not explained well by variations in discrimination intensity correlated with social distance and employer attitudes. We conjecture that differences in available support services by type of disability may help to explain this variability.

Schizophrenia is a profoundly disabling chronic mental disorder with an estimated annual prevalence rate of about 1.3% for the U.S. population age 18 to 54 (USDHHS, 1999). One reason it is so disabling is that onset typically occurs in early adulthood, impacting on a range of life experiences that influence later employment, such as completion of schooling, and early-career experiences at work. For most people, successful navigation of these experiences creates a solid foundation for later career advancement through the development of work skills and social supports.

In this paper, we provide an assessment of the intertemporal economic well-being of a representative sample of females who became new Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) beneficiaries in 1982. We compare their economic circumstances over the 1982 to 1991 period with those of both disabled men who became new SSDI beneficiaries in 1982, and a matched sample of nondisabled females who had sufficient work experience for benefit eligibility should they have become disabled. In 1982, the new SSDI women beneficiaries were a relatively poor segment of U.S. society. One quarter of them lived in poverty, and 48 percent had incomes below 150 percent of the poverty line. Over the subsequent decade, some of those married in 1982 lost husbands and the income contributed by their husbands. Yet, as of 1991, over one half of these disabled women lived in families with income below 150 percent of the poverty line. Social Security benefits to disabled women have played an important, and growing, role in sustaining economic status. Nevertheless, the level of well-being of these women lies substantially below that of the comparison groups, and for some groups of the women, well-being trends were negative both absolutely and relative to the comparison groups. We statistically relate the poverty status of these new female recipients to sociodemographic factors that would be expected to contribute to low well-being, and simulate the effect of Social Security benefits in reducing poverty and replacing earnings. We suggest a number of SSDI-related policy changes that could, at low cost, reduce poverty among those women with the highest incidence rates.