Beyond Health: Nonhealth Risk and the Value of Disability Insurance
研究发现美国伤残保险不仅保障健康风险，还通过覆盖非健康冲击（如经济困难）为轻症受助者提供每年7700美元的净福利，其价值约为重症受助者的四分之三。
The public debate over disability insurance has centered on concerns about individuals without severe health conditions receiving benefits. We go beyond health risk alone to quantify the overall insurance value of U.S. disability programs, including value from insuring nonhealth risk. We find that disability recipients, especially those with less‐severe health conditions, are much more likely to have experienced a wide variety of nonhealth shocks than nonrecipients. Selection into disability receipt on the basis of nonhealth shocks is so strong among individuals with less‐severe health conditions that by many measures less‐severe recipients are worse off than more‐severe recipients. As a result, under baseline assumptions, benefits to less‐severe recipients have an annual surplus value (insurance benefit less efficiency cost) over cost‐equivalent tax cuts of $7700 per recipient, about three‐fourths that of benefits to more‐severe recipients ($9900). Insurance against nonhealth risk accounts for about one‐half of the value of U.S. disability programs.