Journal of Political Economy Vol. 131 No. 11 2023

Disability Insurance Income Saves Lives

Alexander Gelber¹; Timothy Moore¹; Zhuan Pei^2,3; Alexander Strand⁴

¹ National Bureau of Economic Research · ² IZA - Institute of Labor Economics · ³ Cornell University · ⁴ United States Social Security Administration

Abstract

We show that higher payments from US Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) reduce mortality. Using administrative data on new DI beneficiaries, we exploit discontinuities in the benefit formula through a regression kink design. We estimate that $1,000 more in annual DI payments decreases the annual mortality rate of lower-income beneficiaries by approximately 0.18–0.35 percentage points, implying an elasticity of mortality with respect to DI income of around −0.6 to −1.0. We find no robust evidence of an effect of DI income on the mortality of higher-income beneficiaries.

DOI

10.1086/725172

Volume

131

Issue

11

Pages

3156-3185

Language

en

Sources

openalex crossref bibtex:phds-export.bib

Cite

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