HKS Affiliated Authors
Robert W. Scrivner Research Professor of Economics and Social Policy
Excerpt
Excerpt
Health, Employment, and Disability: Implications from the Undocumented Population. George Borjas, April 2018, Paper, "Disability benefit recipients in the United States have nearly doubled in the past two decades, growing substantially faster than the population. It is difficult to estimate how much of this increase is explained by changes in population health, as we often lack a valid counterfactual. We propose using undocumented immigrants as the counterfactual, as they cannot currently claim benefits. Using NHIS microdata, we estimate models of disability as a function of medical conditions for both the legal and undocumented populations." Link