@article {11618, title = {Do Disability Policies Shape How People Perceive Work Limitation? An International Perspective}, journal = {Journal of Disability Policy Studies}, volume = {33}, year = {2022}, pages = {35-45}, abstract = {This study explored the role that cross-country disability policy differences play in shaping individuals? work limitation reporting styles. We used anchoring vignettes available in comparable U.S. and European survey data to test and adjust for reporting differences in self-reported work limitation measures. We found that disability policy generosity scores showed statistically significant predictive power for respondents? work limitation classification scales, with the association stronger and more statistically significant at the lower end and the middle of the scale. That is, respondents under more generous disability regimes tended to apply a more inclusive (i.e., lenient) scale in classifying a mild, moderate, or severe work limitation. Because there is no natural interpretation of the magnitude of the correlation, we conducted counterfactual policy simulations to illustrate the strength of the association; for example, if the United States were to adopt more generous disability policies such as those in Sweden, there might be an associated increase of more than 36 percentage points in the proportion of Americans aged 50 years and above reporting work limitation (of any severity). This research contributes to a better understanding of the role of disability policy in reporting heterogeneity in comparative disability research, an area that has been seldom studied.}, keywords = {disability policy, work limitations}, isbn = {1044-2073}, doi = {10.1177/10442073211010135}, author = {Yin, Na and Frank Heiland} } @article {8195, title = {Anchoring vignettes in the Health and Retirement Study: how do medical professionals and disability recipients characterize the severity of work limitations?}, journal = {PLoS One}, volume = {10}, year = {2015}, month = {2015}, pages = {e0126218}, publisher = {10}, abstract = {

PURPOSE: Recent studies report systematic differences in how individuals categorize the severity of identical health and work limitation vignettes. We investigate how health professionals and disability recipients characterize the severity of work limitations and whether their reporting patterns are robust to demographic, education, and health characteristics. We use the results to illustrate the potential impact of reporting heterogeneity on the distribution of work disability estimated from self-reported categorical health and disability data.

METHOD: Nationally representative data on anchoring disability vignettes from the 2004 Health and Retirement Study (HRS) are used to investigate how respondents with an occupation background in health and Social Security disability beneficiaries categorize work limitation vignettes. Using pain, cardiovascular health, and depression vignettes, we estimate generalized ordered probit models (N = 2,660 individuals or 39,681 person-vignette observations) that allow the severity thresholds to vary by respondent characteristics.

RESULTS: We find that health professionals (excluding nurses) and disability recipients tend to classify identical work limitations as more severe compared to non-health professional non-disabled respondents. For disability recipients, the differences are most pronounced and particularly visible in the tails of the work limitations distribution. For health professionals, we observe smaller differences, affecting primarily the classification of mildly and moderately severe work limitations. The patterns for health professionals (excluding nurses) are robust to demographics, education, and health conditions. The greater likelihood of viewing the vignette person as more severely work limited observed among disability recipients is mostly explained by the fact that these respondents also tend to be in poorer health which itself predicts a more inclusive scale.

CONCLUSIONS: Knowledge of reporting scales from health professionals and disabled individuals can benefit researchers in a broad range of applications in health and disability research. They may be useful as reference scales to evaluate disability survey data. Such knowledge may be beneficial when studying disability programs. Given the increasing availability of anchoring vignette data in surveys, this is a promising area for future evaluation research.

}, keywords = {Aged, Cardiovascular Diseases, depression, Disabled Persons, Female, Health Personnel, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, pain, Retirement, Self Report}, issn = {1932-6203}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0126218}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1371 2Fjournal.pone.0126218}, author = {Frank Heiland and Yin, Na} } @article {8170, title = {How well do individuals predict the selling prices of their homes?}, journal = {Journal of Housing Economics}, volume = {29}, year = {2015}, note = {Export Date: 9 September 2015}, pages = {12-25}, publisher = {29}, abstract = {The accuracy of property values estimated by homeowners is an open empirical question that requires an evaluation of the reported values using a market assessment. Using information on selling prices from the Health and Retirement Study and the American Housing Survey, and after accounting for possible measurement error in reporting and selection regarding those who we observe selling, we find evidence that homeowners overestimate the value of their properties by around 8 with an estimated range between 3.4 and 12.7 (95 CI). 2015.}, keywords = {Housing, Methodology}, doi = {10.1016/j.jhe.2015.04.001}, url = {http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-84936102548andpartnerID=40andmd5=17ba0e3e060e90bbe8714681ba524863}, author = {Hugo Ben{\'\i}tez-Silva and Sel{\c c}uk Eren and Frank Heiland and Jimenez-Martin, Sergi} } @article {7504, title = {Using the Health and Retirement Study to Analyze Housing Decisions, Housing Values, and Housing Prices}, journal = {Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research}, volume = {12}, year = {2010}, note = {Using Smart Source Parsing pp}, pages = {149-58}, publisher = {12}, abstract = {Few existing surveys provide detailed longitudinal information on households and their homes. This article introduces a data source, the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), which has this detailed information but has received little attention by housing researchers to date. The HRS is a rich longitudinal data set that provides information on house values, house prices, and detailed personal characteristics of those who own and sell their homes. The HRS is a nationally representative longitudinal survey that originally sampled 7,700 households headed by an individual aged 51 to 61 in the first interviews in 1992 and 1993. It now also samples additional cohorts of older Americans. Although the HRS is the data set of choice when analyzing the retirement behavior, savings, and health status of older Americans, given its wealth of demographic, health, and socioeconomic data, it has been rarely used to answer questions regarding the housing market. A seldom used section of the questionnaire provides detailed information about real estate transactions by households, however, enabling researchers to repeatedly observe both self-reported house values and the actual selling prices of properties sold since 1992 (originally bought in the past five decades). The article describes a number of important housing-related measures available in the HRS and illustrates the usefulness of these data by conducting a statistical analysis of the accuracy of self-reported home values. Specifically, we analyze the predictive power of self-reported housing wealth when estimating housing prices using the HRS data. The evidence shows a slight overestimation of housing values by older Americans.}, keywords = {Consumption and Savings, Demographics, Housing, Income, Net Worth and Assets, Retirement Planning and Satisfaction}, author = {Hugo Ben{\'\i}tez-Silva and Sel{\c c}uk Eren and Frank Heiland and Jimenez-Martin, Sergi} } @article {7268, title = {Early Claiming of Social Security Benefits and Labor Supply Behavior of Older Americans.}, journal = {Appl Econ}, volume = {40}, year = {2008}, month = {2008 Dec 01}, pages = {2969-2985}, publisher = {40}, abstract = {

The labor supply incentives provided by the early retirement rules of the United States Social Security Old Age benefits program are of growing importance as the Normal Retirement Age (NRA) increases to 67, and the labor force participation of Older Americans starts to increase. These incentives allow individuals who claim benefits before the NRA but continue to work, or return to the labor force, to increase their future rate of benefit pay by having benefits withheld. Since the adjustment of the benefit rate takes place only after the NRA is reached, benefits received before the NRA can become actuarially unfair for those who continue to work after claiming. Consistent with these incentives, estimates from bivariate models of the monthly labor force exit and claiming hazards using data from the Health and Retirement Study indicate that early claimers who do not withdraw from the labor force around the time they claim are increasingly likely to stay in the labor force.

}, issn = {0003-6846}, doi = {10.1080/00036840600994054}, author = {Hugo Ben{\'\i}tez-Silva and Frank Heiland} } @article {5748, title = {How Well Do Individuals Predict the Selling Prices of Their Homes?}, number = {No. 571}, year = {2008}, institution = {The Levy Economics Institute}, address = {New York, New York}, abstract = {Self-reported home values are widely used as a measure of housing wealth by researchers employing a variety of data sets and studying a number of different individual and household level decisions. The accuracy of this measure is an open empirical question, and requires some type of market assessment of the values reported. In this research, we study the predictive power of self-reported housing wealth when estimating sales prices utilizing the Health and Retirement Study. We find that homeowners, on average, overestimate the value of their properties by between 5 and 10 . We also find a strong correlation between accuracy and the economic conditions (measured by the prevalent interest rate, the growth of household income, and the growth of median housing prices) at the time of the purchase of the property. While most individuals overestimate the value of their properties, those who bought during more difficult economic times tend to be more accurate, and in some cases even underestimate the value of their house. This cyclicality of the overestimation of house prices can provide some clues regarding the reasons for the difficulties currently faced by many homeowners.}, keywords = {Housing, Net Worth and Assets}, doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1107165}, author = {Hugo Ben{\'\i}tez-Silva and Sel{\c c}uk Eren and Frank Heiland and Jimenez-Martin, Sergi} } @article {7145, title = {The Social Security Earnings Test and Work Incentives}, journal = {Journal of Policy Analysis and Management}, volume = {26}, year = {2007}, pages = {527}, publisher = {26}, abstract = {The labor supply and benefit claiming incentives provided by the early retirement rules of the Social Security Old Age benefits program are of growing importance as the Normal Retirement Age (NRA) increases to 67, the labor force participation of Older Americans rises, and a variety of reforms to the Social Security system are considered. Any reform needs to take into account the effects and rationale of the Social Security Earnings Test and the Actuarial Adjustment Factor, which are likely to be widely misunderstood due to the relatively little attention paid by policymakers and researchers to the fact that Americans are willing to work while receiving benefits. We describe these incentives and emphasize that individuals who claim benefits before the NRA but continue to work, or return to the labor force, can reduce the early retirement penalty by suspending the collection of monthly benefits if they earn above the Earnings Test limit. We then argue that the Earnings Test can be distortionary and is costly to administer, and that these characteristics are inflated by the lack of information given to Older Americans regarding the consequences of working while receiving retirement benefits. We present results from statistical models of labor force exit behavior using data from the Health and Retirement Study showing the relevance of these incentives, and investigate the importance of informational asymmetries among beneficiaries regarding benefit withholding using a dynamic life-cycle model of labor supply and benefit claiming. We then use the latter framework to compare the behavioral and welfare implications of a removal of the Earnings Test to the policy of providing more information regarding the Earnings Test and the adjustment of the rate of benefit pay to Older Americans. 2007 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.}, keywords = {Employment and Labor Force, Retirement Planning and Satisfaction, Social Security}, url = {https://www.jstor.org/stable/30163415}, author = {Hugo Ben{\'\i}tez-Silva and Frank Heiland} }