{"title":"Seasonality in U.S. disability applications, labor market, and the pandemic echoes","authors":"Kajal Lahiri, Yimeng Yin","doi":"10.1016/j.labeco.2024.102510","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper examines the seasonality in the U.S. Social Security disability applications, and shows that the monthly disability applications exhibit a double-peak seasonal pattern which lags a similar seasonal pattern in unemployment and unemployment insurance initial claims by one to two months. The broad seasonal patterns in disability applications are remarkably similar across states but with significant heterogeneity in amplitudes, which seems to be associated with climatic factors. We utilize this inter-state heterogeneity to show that the seasonal patterns in disability applications and labor market conditions are correlated even after controlling for climatic effects. We also show that the seasonally in disability applications generated by the automatic settings of the widely used seasonal adjustment program X13 ARIMA-SEATS are distorted during the COVID-19 pandemic and the pattern of the distortion is similar to that in employment data.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48153,"journal":{"name":"Labour Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2000,"publicationDate":"2024-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Labour Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092753712400006X","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This paper examines the seasonality in the U.S. Social Security disability applications, and shows that the monthly disability applications exhibit a double-peak seasonal pattern which lags a similar seasonal pattern in unemployment and unemployment insurance initial claims by one to two months. The broad seasonal patterns in disability applications are remarkably similar across states but with significant heterogeneity in amplitudes, which seems to be associated with climatic factors. We utilize this inter-state heterogeneity to show that the seasonal patterns in disability applications and labor market conditions are correlated even after controlling for climatic effects. We also show that the seasonally in disability applications generated by the automatic settings of the widely used seasonal adjustment program X13 ARIMA-SEATS are distorted during the COVID-19 pandemic and the pattern of the distortion is similar to that in employment data.
期刊介绍:
Labour Economics is devoted to publishing research in the field of labour economics both on the microeconomic and on the macroeconomic level, in a balanced mix of theory, empirical testing and policy applications. It gives due recognition to analysis and explanation of institutional arrangements of national labour markets and the impact of these institutions on labour market outcomes.