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The paper presents how the researcher conducted a study to examine the association between labor market changes and disability among working-age Americans at the county-level. The researcher theorized that deindustrialization—or the decline of industrial capacity due to social and economic change—created a polarized workforce in which economic and social circumstances are driving up rates of disability among marginalized American workers affected by these changing conditions. Because states vary in the generosity, restrictiveness, and duration of welfare assistance provided, the researcher also examined whether social welfare moderated the association between labor market changes and disability. The researcher used Integrated Public Use Microdata Series National Health Interview Survey (IPUMS NHIS) data for disability and sociodemographic measures, the U.S. Census Bureau’s County Business Patterns data for labor market measures, and the University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research’s National Welfare data for state-level social welfare measures. The researcher used a year and county fixed-effects Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression model to estimate the associations between labor market measures and disability from 1980-2017. The researcher found that labor market conditions—operationalized as the percentage of goods producing and service-providing businesses in a county—were associated with disability at the county-level, and that these associations remained after controlling for county-level sociodemographic characteristics (e.g., education, marital status, income, GDP, or the sex composition of the county). Higher percentage of goods-producing businesses was associated with lower rates of disability and higher percentages of service-providing businesses was associated with higher rates of disability. For goods-producing businesses, the researcher found that there were statistically significant positive interaction effects for unemployment and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for most outcomes, and negative interaction effects for minimum wage and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) for most outcomes. For service-providing businesses, there were positive interaction effects for SSDI for most outcomes and negative interaction effects for unemployment and SSI for most outcomes.

Citation

Garcia, S. (n.d.). The Role of Labor Market Polarization in Disability among Working-Age Americans. Chief Evaluation Office, U.S. Department of Labor.

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This study was part of CEO’s Summer Data Challenge on Equity and Underserved Communities, and was produced outside of CEO’s standard research development process.