6 December 2013

Unemployment Insurance and Disability Insurance in the Great Recession

Andreas I. Mueller, Jesse Rothstein, and Till M. von Wachter exploit cross-state variation in the pattern of unemployment insurance (UI) benefit extensions during the recent recession to investigate whether UI exhaustion raises the probability that an unemployed individual applies for disability insurance (DI). They find no evidence that the unemployed turn to the DI system after their UI benefits expire.