Meyer and Mok 2014 — Disabled Women and Their Economic Well-Being

Summary

A companion to Meyer and Mok (2013/2014) on male disability, this paper studies the economic consequences of disability for women using 44 years of Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data (1968–2011). Women's disability effects on earnings are similar in magnitude to men's (−25% at year 10 for average disabled, −82% for Chronic-Severe), but income and consumption declines are systematically smaller, primarily because women's earnings represent a smaller fraction of family income. The paper also documents novel findings on marriage stability: disability significantly raises the divorce hazard for women, but the effect is nonlinear in severity — Temporary and Chronic-Not Severe raise the hazard while Chronic-Severe does not. Husbands of disabled wives show no significant added worker effect.

Key Claims

By age 60, 62% of women will have experienced disability during working years; 19% will have experienced Chronic-Severe disability — comparable to men (21%).
Women are more likely than men to experience any disability before the mid-40s; rates converge by age 60.
Average disabled women: −25% earnings, −6% after-transfer income, −4 to −6% food+housing consumption by year 10.
Chronic-Severe disabled women: −82% earnings, −20% after-transfer income, −10% food+housing consumption by year 10.
Women's consumption declines are roughly half those of similarly disabled men (Chronic-Severe men: −25% food+housing by year 10).
Public transfers quintuple for Chronic-Severe women: ~$1,000/year pre-onset → ~$8,000/year by years 6–10; ~40% receive Social Security Administration (SSA) benefits; ~43% receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
Chronic-Severe women show no net dissaving (unlike disabled men); earnings loss and rising transfers roughly cancel out.
Food-away-from-home drops sharply for Chronic-Severe women (−31% by year 10); food at home unchanged — substitution toward home eating absorbs the shock.
No significant added worker effect: husbands of disabled wives do not increase labor supply regardless of severity.
Women's disability raises the divorce hazard in the long run (+0.6 percentage points [pp] on a 1.4% annual base rate); Temporary and Chronic-Not Severe drive the effect; Chronic-Severe does not show elevated hazard.
No home production substitution: disabled women spend more time watching TV, relaxing, sleeping, and on medical services; husbands' reduced work hours are spent watching TV with the wife — companionship as care rather than instrumental home production.

Concepts Introduced or Extended

Entities Mentioned

Quotes

"While disability reduces the earnings and labor supply of women just as in the case of men, its effect on family income and family consumption is somewhat smaller than for disabled men. Nevertheless, disabled wives fare less well when it comes to marriage stability and we show evidence of their higher divorce hazard following disability in the short run."

My Take

The paper's most important contribution is the divorce finding — the nonlinear severity gradient (Temporary and Chronic-Not Severe raise hazard; Chronic-Severe does not) is genuinely new and theoretically interesting, and contrasts with Charles and Stephens (2004) who found no disability-divorce link for wives. The null added worker effect for husbands complements the null result in the men's paper (wives of disabled men also do not significantly increase labor supply in the PSID), reinforcing the picture of disability insurance (DI)/transfer crowd-out in the U.S. context. The consumption findings are valuable for showing that women's disability, though large in earnings terms, has modest welfare consequences — partly mechanical, given lower pre-disability earnings shares, not evidence of stronger insurance. The SNAP take-up rate (43% for Chronic-Severe) signals that many disabled women cannot qualify for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) due to low earnings histories, a design gap in the DI system.