TY - JOUR AU - Kapteyn, Arie AU - Smith, James P AU - van Soest, Arthur TI - Work Disability, Work, and Justification Bias in Europe and the U.S. JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 15245 PY - 2009 Y2 - August 2009 DO - 10.3386/w15245 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15245 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15245.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Arie Kapteyn University of Southern California Center for Economic and Social Research 635 Downey Way Suite 312 Los Angeles, CA 90089-3332 Tel: 310/448-5383 E-Mail: kapteyn@usc.edu James P. Smith RAND Corporation 1776 Main Street P.O. Box 2138 Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138 Tel: 310-451-6925 E-Mail: jsmith_1776@outlook.com Arthur van Soest Tilburg University P.O. Box 90153 5000 LE Tilburg The Netherlands E-Mail: a.h.o.vansoest@uvt.nl M1 - published as Arie Kapteyn, James P. Smith, Arthur van Soest. "Work Disability, Work, and Justification Bias in Europe and the United States ," in David A. Wise, editor, "Explorations in the Economics of Aging" University of Chicago Press (2011) M3 - presented at "Boulders - Conference on Aging 09", May 7-10, 2009 AB - To analyze the effect of health on work, many studies use a simple self-assessed health measure based upon a question such as "do you have an impairment or health problem limiting the kind or amount of work you can do?" A possible drawback of such a measure is the possibility that different groups of respondents may use different response scales. This is commonly referred to as "differential item functioning" (DIF). A specific form of DIF is justification bias: to justify the fact that they don't work, non-working respondents may classify a given health problem as a more serious work limitation than working respondents. In this paper we use anchoring vignettes to identify justification bias and other forms of DIF across countries and socio-economic groups among older workers in the U.S. and Europe. Generally, we find differences in response scales across countries, partly related to social insurance generosity and employment protection. Furthermore, we find significant evidence of justification bias in the U.S. but not in Europe, suggesting differences in social norms concerning work. ER -