Stephan Lindner

Overview

Stephan Lindner is a health economist at Oregon Health & Science University, Center for Health Systems Effectiveness. His research focuses on disability insurance, labor market transitions, and the interaction between health policy and employment. He was previously affiliated with the Urban Institute.

Key Contributions

• Cross-program social insurance interactions (Lindner and Nichols 2012): Co-authored Urban Institute working paper using SIPP 1996–2010 matched to SSA records to identify causal effects of four temporary assistance programs (UI, SNAP, TANF, TDI) on DI/SSI applications and re-employment. Found UI participation deters DI applications (extending Lindner 2011) while SNAP participation may increase SSI applications. Introduces the target-population-overlap principle: sign of cross-program effect is determined by whether the TA program and disability program share the same eligibility structure (work-history-based vs. means-tested). Instruments are weak (Kleibergen-Paap F ≈ 3). See Lindner and Nichols 2012 — The Impact of Temporary Assistance Programs on Disability Rolls and Re-Employment.
• Employment transitions before DI application (Lindner 2013): Documents that most DI applicants transition through a non-employment spell before applying (employment rate drops from ~80% to ~30% in the 30 months before application), and that job loss accounts for nearly all pre-application income decline. Using a beginning-event classification of non-employment spells, finds sharp heterogeneity: illness/injury applicants (49% of 1996–2004 spells) apply in ~4.8 months with minimal job search or UI use; job-loss applicants wait ~9.2 months and heavily use UI (71%) and job search — suggesting the latter group is the appropriate target for early-intervention re-employment policy. See Lindner 2013 — From Working to Applying Employment Transitions of Applicants for Disability Insurance in the United States.
• UI-DI substitution (Lindner 2011): Found that higher UI monthly benefits significantly reduce the hazard to DI application among job-losing, work-limited, UI-eligible workers (SIPP 1990–2004 matched to SSA administrative records). The insurance channel dominates the search effort channel: UI income substitutes for DI cash income, reducing the marginal value of applying. UI take-up itself also reduces DI application once correlated unobserved costs are accounted for via Heckman-Singer semi-parametric random effects. Extending UI duration has a much larger elasticity (−0.927) than raising benefit levels (−0.094); duration extension may be cost-effective while benefit level increases are not. See Lindner 2011 — How Does Unemployment Insurance Affect the Decision to Apply for Social Security Disability Insurance.
• UI-DI substitution, published version (Lindner 2016, Journal of Human Resources): Published version of the UI-DI substitution research using SIPP 1990–2007 (n = 8,886 UI recipients, 176 DI applicants). Cox proportional hazard model yields a significant negative effect of UI monthly benefits on DI application hazard ($-9.55$ per $\$100$/month, $p < 0.05$); spell-level logit is directionally similar (~−6%) but not significant. The hazard-vs.-logit discrepancy is formally attributed to unobserved heterogeneity biasing the hazard estimator. Effects are larger for workers 50+ and those without college degrees. Cost-benefit: $\$1.00$ UI increase → $\$0.15$ DI expenditure reduction. Extends the Chetty (2006) optimal UI formula with a cross-program DI-savings term; incorporating this raises the optimal UI replacement rate by >20 percentage points for $\gamma = 2$–$5$. See Lindner 2016 — How Do Unemployment Insurance Benefits Affect the Decision to Apply for Social Security Disability Insurance.
• Reconciling DI employment effects (Bound, Lindner, and Waidmann 2014): Co-authored SIPP-SSA decomposition showing that aggregate studies overstate DI's role in the employment decline of work-limited men; during 1996–2004, when DI rolls barely grew, employment continued falling — DI explains at most 20–50% of the later decline. Resolves the tension between aggregate attribution and IV-based causal estimates (Bound 1989, French and Song 2014). See Causal Effects of DI Receipt.
• DI applicants over the business cycle (Lindner, Burdick, and Meseguer 2017): documented that recession-era DI applications shift toward conditional applicants at Steps 2 and 4; showed the disincentive effect falls with unemployment; estimated the opposing compositional and labor-market forces on denied applicants' post-application outcomes
• Employment transitions of DI applicants (Lindner 2013, Journal of Social Policy): examined how applicants transition from employment to DI application, including the delay between job loss and application

Related

• John Bound
• Timothy Waidmann
• Causal Effects of DI Receipt
• Conditional DI Applicants
• SSA Sequential Determination Process
• DI Denied Population
• Javier Meseguer

Sources

• Lindner 2011 — How Does Unemployment Insurance Affect the Decision to Apply for Social Security Disability Insurance
• Lindner 2016 — How Do Unemployment Insurance Benefits Affect the Decision to Apply for Social Security Disability Insurance
• Lindner and Nichols 2012 — The Impact of Temporary Assistance Programs on Disability Rolls and Re-Employment
• Lindner 2013 — From Working to Applying Employment Transitions of Applicants for Disability Insurance in the United States
• Bound Lindner and Waidmann 2014 — Reconciling Findings on the Employment Effect of Disability Insurance
• Lindner Burdick and Meseguer 2017 — Characteristics and Employment of Applicants for Social Security Disability Insurance over the Business Cycle