Richard V. Burkhauser

Overview

Richard V. Burkhauser is a Cornell University labor economist specializing in disability policy, income distribution, and the labor market consequences of health and disability. He has been one of the most prolific contributors to the empirical DI literature since the 1990s, authoring studies on employer accommodation, DI application timing, disability employment trends, and the causal link between obesity and DI receipt.

Key Contributions

• Obesity and DI causality (Burkhauser and Cawley 2004): First IV-based study showing obesity causally raises disability income receipt by 5–9 pp (2SLS), with OLS underestimating the effect by 5–15×. Instrument: biological relative's weight. Documents SSA's 1999 deletion and 2002 restoration of the obesity Listing.
• Employer accommodation and disability duration: Burkhauser, Butler, and Kim (1995) show that job accommodation by the employer at time of injury is the dominant predictor of stable return to work, using hazard model analysis of the PSID.
• DI application timing: Burkhauser, Butler, and Weathers (2001) document how policy variables — benefit replacement rates, earnings thresholds — influence when health-impaired workers choose to apply for DI.
• Disability employment trends: Multiple papers with Mary Daly and Andrew Houtenville tracking declines in employment among working-age people with disabilities over the 1980s–2000s; Burkhauser and Daly (2011) book synthesizes this literature.
• Disability policy overview: Burkhauser and Daly (2002) JEP article provides an accessible summary of the policy environment driving DI growth.
• CPS/ACS disability measurement bias (Burkhauser, Houtenville, and Tennant 2014): Demonstrates that the 2008 removal of the work-activity limitation question from the ACS and CPS-BMS produces systematically biased social success estimates. The six-question sequence captures only 63.3% of SSDI/SSI-Disabled Adults recipients (vs. 84.1% for work-activity limitation alone; 92.0% for the seven-question union). Using the six-question-only population overstates employment by ~14 pp and understates SSDI/SSI receipt by ~10 pp relative to the work-limitation-based population. Recommends reinstating the work-activity limitation question. See Disability Prevalence Measurement.

Related

• John Cawley
• Andrew J. Houtenville
• Jennifer Tennant
• David Stapleton
• DI Growth Decomposition
• Listing of Impairments
• Conditional DI Applicants
• Disability Insurance Program
• Disability Prevalence Measurement
• Disability Management and Return to Work

Sources

• Burkhauser and Cawley 2004 — Obesity, Disability, and Movement Onto the Disability Insurance Rolls
• Burkhauser Houtenville and Tennant 2014 — Capturing the Elusive Working-Age Population With Disabilities Reconciling Conflicting Social Success Estimates