Matthew S. Rutledge

Overview

Matthew S. Rutledge is a research economist at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. His work focuses on retirement income security, disability insurance, and the interaction between labor markets and public programs for older and disabled workers.

Key Contributions / Features

• DI applicant composition across business cycles (Coe and Rutledge 2013): Co-author of a CRR study comparing DI applicant characteristics across the 2001–03 recession, 2004–06 expansion, and 2008–10 Great Recession using HRS and SIPP–SSA linked data. Documented that recession applicants are younger, better educated, higher income, and more recently employed — the Conditional DI Applicants profile. Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition reveals that fewer than 40% of the application rate increase and fewer than 25% of the allowance rate rise are explained by observable characteristics; the award rate paradoxically rose despite a healthier applicant pool. See DI Countercyclicality.
• Flat pre-application health (Rutledge, Wu, Guan, and Trenkamp 2014): SIPP-SSA linked data showing flat pre-application health trends 1990–2013; rules out health deterioration as the driver of DI roll growth. See DI Growth Decomposition and Conditional DI Applicants.
• Health Mismatch Index (Rutledge, Zulkarnain, and King 2019): Lead author of the study constructing the HMI — linking SIPP health difficulty data (1997–2010) to ORS job requirements at the occupation level; 178 occupations, 661 occupation-years. Key findings: ~7% of workers have at least one health-job mismatch; HMI fell 7.4% → 6.1% (1997–2010) despite aging; +10 pp HMI → +0.45 pp SSDI receipt in next 16 months (nearly doubling the mean); effect concentrated in workers 50+. See Health Mismatch Index.
• Mortality gap and Social Security progressivity (Rutledge 2018): CRR Issue Brief synthesizing evidence that the widening SES mortality gap has substantially eroded Social Security's progressivity. Key finding assembled from Bosworth and Burke (2014): differential mortality offsets approximately half of overall SS progressivity. Cohort comparison (Auerbach et al. 2017/NAS): top-quintile men's lifetime SS benefits rose $229k→$295k (1930→1960 birth cohorts, 2009$) while bottom-quintile men's benefits fell in absolute terms. See Social Security Progressivity and Income-Mortality Gradient.

Related

• Norma B. Coe
• DI Growth Decomposition
• Conditional DI Applicants
• DI Countercyclicality
• Health Mismatch Index
• Residual Functional Capacity
• Social Security Progressivity
• Income-Mortality Gradient
• April Yanyuan Wu
• Alice Zulkarnain

Sources

• Rutledge et al 2014 — Are Disability Applicants Unhealthier Than Ever
• Rutledge Zulkarnain and King 2019 — The Relationship Between Occupational Requirements and SSDI Activity
• Rutledge 2018 — How Is the Mortality Gap Affecting Social Security Progressivity
• Coe and Rutledge 2013 — How Does the Composition of Disability Insurance Applicants Change across Business Cycles
• Mueller Rothstein and von Wachter 2016 — Unemployment Insurance and Disability Insurance in the Great Recession