Erin Todd Bronchetti

What determines employer accommodation of injured workers? The influence of workers' compensation costs, state policies, and case characteristics

Despite a recent dramatic increase in the rate of employer accommodation of injured workers, the extant literature provides little evidence on the determinants of accommodation or the reasons for this upward trend. In this study, the authors take a comprehensive approach to estimating the determinants of workplace accommodation, assessing the influence of employer workers’ compensation (WC) costs; WC market features and state WC laws; and characteristics of firms, injured workers, and their injuries. Using state-level data from the BLS, they find that employer WC costs, WC market features, and state return-to-work (RTW) policies all have an impact on accommodation, but the effects are small and explain only one-fifth of the increase in restricted work. With data on injured workers from the NLSY79 and HRS, the authors study case-specific determinants of accommodation. Results suggest that employer and injury characteristics matter most, and these results are consistent with accommodation occurring mostly at large, experience-rated employers.

Local Food Prices, SNAP Purchasing Power, and Child Health

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps) is one of the most important elements of the social safety net. Unlike most other safety net programs, SNAP varies little across states and over time, which creates challenges for quasi-experimental evaluation. Notably, SNAP benefits are fixed across 48 states; but local food prices vary, leading to geographic variation in the real value – or purchasing power – of SNAP benefits. In this study, we provide the first estimates that leverage variation in SNAP purchasing power across markets to examine effects of SNAP on child health. We link panel data on regional food prices to National Health Interview Survey data and use a fixed effects framework to estimate the relationship between local purchasing power of SNAP and children’s health and health care utilization. We find that lower SNAP purchasing power leads to lower utilization of preventive health care and more days of school missed due to illness. We find no effect on reported health status.