Douglas A. Webber

Age and Disability Employment Discrimination: Occupational Rehabilitation Implications

Introduction As concerns grow that a thinning labor force due to retirement will lead to worker shortages, it becomes critical to support positive employment outcomes of groups who have been underutilized, specifically older workers and workers with disabilities. Better understanding perceived age and disability discrimination and their intersection can help rehabilitation specialists and employers address challenges expected as a result of the evolving workforce. Methods Using U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Integrated Mission System data, we investigate the nature of employment discrimination charges that cite the Americans with Disabilities Act or Age Discrimination in Employment Act individually or jointly. We focus on trends in joint filings over time and across categories of age, types of disabilities, and alleged discriminatory behavior. Results We find that employment discrimination claims that originate from older or disabled workers are concentrated within a subset of issues that include reasonable accommodation, retaliation, and termination. Age-related disabilities are more frequently referenced in joint cases than in the overall pool of ADA filings, while the psychiatric disorders are less often referenced in joint cases. When examining charges made by those protected under both the ADA and ADEA, results from a logit model indicate that in comparison to charges filed under the ADA alone, jointly-filed ADA/ADEA charges are more likely to be filed by older individuals, by those who perceive discrimination in hiring and termination, and to originate from within the smallest firms. Conclusion In light of these findings, rehabilitation and workplace practices to maximize the hiring and retention of older workers and those with disabilities are discussed.

Downsizing: Job loss and effects on firms and workers

Job loss is painful. There are thousands of individual stories of workers who lose their jobs each year from all parts of the world. A great deal of work across the social sciences examines the causes and consequences of job loss. This chapter addresses a small part of that work and specifically focuses on the effects of job loss on workers (including the effects on subsequent wages and on health) and on the effects of job loss on companies (including short- and longer-run corporate performance). Other questions are also considered, such as whether firms are less committed to workers and workers less committed to firms than they were in the recent past. A variety of data sources are accessed for research on job loss, and consideration is given to the alternatives to job loss and the various public policies adopted in the United States and throughout the world. To begin, it should be noted that this chapter will not focus on other important issues related to job loss. It will not examine, in significant detail, the effects of international trade or tariffs. The chapter is also not about labor turnover that is initiated by the worker. Voluntary quits and separations are not discussed, nor are firings for cause or strictly for performance. The chapter examines instances where companies layoff employees (temporarily or permanently, although the focus is on the latter). It examines changes in the displacement of workers over time, reasons for the changes, and the effects on workers and companies. There is also a focus on policies, consideration being given as to whether there can be improvements to what is known and done about job loss, and a discussion of how other countries handle reductions in the demand for labor.

Firm-Level Monopsony and the Gender Pay Gap

Using a dynamic labor supply model and linked employer-employee data, I find evidence of substantial search frictions, with females facing a higher level of frictions than males. However, the majority of the gender gap in labor supply elasticities is driven by across firm sorting rather than within firm differences, a feature predicted in the search theory literature, but which has not been previously documented. The gender differential in supply elasticities leads to 3.3% lower earnings for women. Roughly 60% of the elasticity differential can be explained by marriage and children penalties faced by women but not men.

The Impact of Work‐Limiting Disability on Labor Force Participation

According to the justification hypothesis, non-employed individuals may over-report their level of work limitation, leading to biased census/survey estimates of the prevalence of severe disabilities and the associated labor force participation rate. For researchers studying policies which impact the disabled or elderly (e.g., Supplemental Security Income, Disability Insurance, and Early Retirement), this could lead to significant bias in key parameters of interest. Using the American Community Survey, we examine the potential for both inflated and deflated reported disability status and generate a general index of disability, which can be used to reduce the bias of these self-reports in other studies. We find that at least 4.8 million individuals have left the labor force because of a work-limiting disability, at least four times greater than the impact implied by our replication of previous models.

The Returns to College Persistence for Marginal Students: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from University Dismissal Policies

We estimate the returns to college using administrative data on both college enrollment and earnings. Exploiting that colleges dismiss low-performing students on the basis of exact GPA cutoffs, we use a regression discontinuity design to estimate the earnings impacts of college. Dismissal leads to a short-run increase in earnings and tuition savings, but the future fall in earnings is sufficiently large that 8 years after dismissal, persisting students have already recouped their up-front investment with an internal rate of return of 4.1%. We provide a variety of evidence that manipulation of the running variable does not drive our results.

Health Insurance Benefit Mandates and the Firm-Size Distribution

By 2010, the average US state had passed 37 health insurance benefit mandates (laws requiring health insurance plans to cover certain additional services). Previous work has shown that these mandates likely increase health insurance premiums, which in turn could make it more costly for firms to compensate employees. Using 1996–2010 data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages and a novel instrumental variables strategy, we show that there is limited evidence that mandates reduce employment. However, we find that mandates lead to a distortion in firm size, benefiting larger firms that are able to self-insure and thus exempt themselves from these state-level health insurance regulations. This distortion in firm size away from small businesses may lead to substantial decreases in productivity and economic growth.

The political roots of health insurance benefit mandates

Purpose - As of 2011, the average US state had 37 health insurance benefit mandates, laws requiring health insurance plans to cover a specific treatment, condition, provider, or person. This number is a massive increase from less than one mandate per state in 1965, and the topic takes on a new significance now, when the federal government is considering many new mandates as part of the “essential health benefits” required by the Affordable Care Act. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach - The authors use fixed effects estimation on 1996-2010 data to determine why some states pass more mandates than others. Findings - The authors find that the political strength of health care providers is the strongest determinant of mandates. Originality/value - A large body of literature has attempted to evaluate the effect of mandates on health, health insurance, and the labor market. However, previous papers did not consider the political processes behind the passage of mandates. In fact, when they estimate the laws’ effect, almost all papers on the subject assume that mandates are passed at random. The paper opens the way to estimating the causal effect of mandates on health insurance and the labor market using an instrumental variables strategy that incorporates political information about why mandates get passed.

Workplace problems, mental health and substance use

Little is known about how workplace problems may influence diagnosable mental health and substance use (MHSU) disorders. We examine the associations between three common workplace problems (experiencing problems with co-workers, job changes and perceived financial strain) and three MHSU disorders (mood, anxiety and substance abuse/dependence). The analysis utilizes longitudinal data on a sample of working-age adults from the National Epidemiological Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. These data are well suited for our research objective as the survey was specifically designed to study MHSU disorders. Results show that experiencing these workplace problems is associated with an increased risk for mental health disorders, but not substance use disorders. Importantly, various robustness checks and sensitivity analyses demonstrate that our findings cannot be not fully explained by omitted variables, reverse causality or sample attrition.

Immigration and access to fringe benefits: Evidence from the Tobacco Use Supplements

We examine the extent to which assimilation and residential ethnic enclaves are associated with immigrant access to smoking-related fringe benefits. In particular, we consider access to office smoking bans and employer-sponsored smoking cessation programs. These worksite characteristics are important and understudied fringe benefits. They are critical because they can protect immigrants from exposure to environmental tobacco smoke in the workplace and can help immigrant smokers quit smoking. We first document that immigrants have lower access to these benefits than natives. Second, we show that assimilation is positively associated with smoking-related fringe benefit access while enclave residence does not predict access.

Examining the Interstate Mobility of Recent College Graduates

An increasingly important goal of state policymakers is to keep young, well-educated adults to remain in that state instead of moving elsewhere after college, as evidenced by New York’s recent move to tie state grant aid to staying in state after graduation. We used American Community Survey data from 2005–2015 to examine the prevalence of interstate mobility over the past decade as well as provide state-level rates of “brain drain.” We found substantial variations in interstate mobility across states, which has important policy implications.