The Great Recession, Older Workers with Disabilities, and Implications for Retirement Security

35 Pages Posted: 24 Jan 2013

See all articles by Onur Altindag

Onur Altindag

Bentley University; Economic Research Forum

Lucie Schmidt

Smith College; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Purvi Sevak

University of Michigan at Ann Arbor - Mathematica Policy Research

Date Written: November 1, 2012

Abstract

Evidence suggests that older workers with disabilities have been hit particularly hard by the recent recession. The increased difficulty in finding a job faced by individuals with disabilities, combined with the longer spells of unemployment experienced by all workers in this recession, could mean that laid-off disabled workers in their pre-retirement years may never return to work. In this paper, we use data from the 2004-2010 waves of the Health and Retirement Study to examine how the great recession has affected workers with chronic health conditions that put them at greater risk of disability. Our results suggest that increases in job losses were 30% greater for those with greater underlying risk of disability than for the general HRS population, and decreases in consumption were 20% greater. These results have important implications for the well-being of disabled individuals nearing retirement.

Keywords: older workers, Great Recession, disability, labor force participation, retirement

Suggested Citation

Altindag, Onur and Schmidt, Lucie and Sevak, Purvi, The Great Recession, Older Workers with Disabilities, and Implications for Retirement Security (November 1, 2012). Michigan Retirement Research Center Research Paper No. 2012-277, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2206378 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2206378

Onur Altindag

Bentley University

175 Forest Street
Waltham, MA 02145
United States

Economic Research Forum ( email )

Cairo
Egypt

Lucie Schmidt

Smith College ( email )

Northampton, MA 01060
United States

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

Purvi Sevak (Contact Author)

University of Michigan at Ann Arbor - Mathematica Policy Research ( email )

Ann Arbor, MI 481030
United States

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