Overview
Health economist at the University of Washington (at time of publication). Works on disability insurance, retirement behavior, health insurance, and Social Security program interactions. Affiliated with the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.
Key Contributions / Features
- DI lock empirics (Coe and Rupp 2013): Lead author of the first systematic empirical test of the DI lock hypothesis, showing that aggregate lock is small (extended Medicare/Medicaid eligibility provisions appear to work) but that heterogeneous SSI lock and DI lock persist among moderate-expenditure and privately-uninsured subgroups, respectively; Medicaid buy-in programs and strict non-group regulation help alleviate these. See Employment Lock.
- DI applicant composition across business cycles (Coe and Rutledge 2013): Lead author of a CRR study using HRS and SIPP–SSA linked data across three economic periods (2001–03 recession, 2004–06 expansion, 2008–10 Great Recession). Found that Great Recession applicants are younger, better educated, higher income, and more recently employed — confirming the Conditional DI Applicants profile. Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition shows fewer than 40% of the application rate rise and fewer than 25% of the allowance rate rise are explained by observables. The award rate rose despite a healthier applicant pool and no policy changes — an anomaly implying structural shifts in SSA evaluation behavior. See DI Countercyclicality.
- Retirement and health in Europe (Coe and Zamarro 2011): Co-author of a 2SLS study using SHARE Wave 1 (11 European countries, 5,282 men) with country-specific statutory retirement ages as instruments. Key finding: retirement causally reduces the probability of bad self-reported health by 35 pp and improves a composite health index by ~1 SD; no causal effect on depression or cognitive function. OLS-IV sign reversal confirms negative health selection into early retirement masks the causal direction. See Health Effects of Retirement.
- SSDI application rate variation (Coe et al. 2011): Lead author of a CRR study finding that health, demographics, and employment explain >70% of cross-state SSDI application rate variation; TDI mandates and strict HI market regulation independently reduce applications, an application-entry analog to DI lock. See Geographic Variation in Disability Insurance and Employment Lock.
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