TY  - JOUR
AU  - van Soest, Arthur
AU  - Andreyeva, Tatiana
AU  - Kapteyn, Arie
AU  - Smith, James P
TI  - Self Reported Disability and Reference Groups
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 17153
PY  - 2011
Y2  - June 2011
DO  - 10.3386/w17153
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17153
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17153.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Arthur van Soest
Tilburg University
P.O. Box 90153
5000 LE Tilburg
The Netherlands
E-Mail: a.h.o.vansoest@uvt.nl

Tatiana Andreyeva
University of Connecticut
Dept of Agricultural & Resource Economics
Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity
Hartford, CT 06103
US
Tel: (203) 516-1200
Fax: (203) 432-9674
E-Mail: tatiana.andreyeva@uconn.edu

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
M1  - published as Arthur van Soest, Tatiana Andreyeva, Arie Kapteyn, James P. Smith. "Self-Reported Disability and Reference Groups," in David A. Wise, editor, "Investigations in the Economics of Aging" University of Chicago Press (2012)

M3  - presented at "Aging Conference", May 6-7, 2011
AB  - Social networks and social interactions affect individual and social norms. We develop a direct test of this using Dutch survey data on how respondents evaluate work disability of hypothetical people with some work related health problem (vignettes). We analyze how the thresholds respondents use to decide what constitutes a (mild or more serious) work disability depend on the number of people receiving disability insurance benefits (DI) in their reference group. We find that reference group effects are significant and contribute substantially to an explanation of why self-reported work disability in the Netherlands is much higher than in, for example, the US.
ER  -