Health shocks, disability and work

Maarten Lindeboom, Ana Llena-Nozal, Bas van der Klaauw*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

This paper focuses on the relation between health shocks and the onset of a disability and employment outcomes. We estimate an event-history model using data from the British National Child Development Study (NCDS), where accidents causing a unscheduled hospitalization are the measure for unanticipated health shocks. Our results show that experiencing such a health shock substantially increases the likelihood of the onset of a disability, while it does not have direct effects on employment at later ages. This finding is used to simulate the causal effects of the onset of a disability on later employment outcomes. These simulations show that about two-third of the association between disability and employment can be explained by the causal effect of the onset of a disability on employment. The remaining one-third is selection. For men and lower-educated workers the association is mainly explained by the causal effect, while for women selection is more important.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)186-200
Number of pages15
JournalLabour Economics
Volume43
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Dec 2016

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