Health, disability and labor force participation trends in Poland

The article presents the results of the decomposition of the changes in the age profiles of percentages of disabled people and labor force participation rates (LFPR) using the age-period-cohort (APC) decomposition. The aim of the analysis is the separation of long-term (cohort-specific) and short-term (period-specific) tendencies to verify hypotheses about the positive impact of the increasing human capital of new cohorts in the population on health and LFPRs. Calculations have been made on quasi-panel data constructed from the Polish Labor Force Survey (PLFS) database for the period 1995–2017. The results show that the improving health of people of pre-retirement age was very loosely connected with the gains in their labor force participation. The lower share of people with disability benefits and the improving LFPRs of disabled people have played a relatively minor role in explaining the change in the total LFPR in the economy as the vast majority of the positive changes in the labor supply were due to changes in the behavior of people without disabilities. Finally, the results of the APC decomposition do not confirm the hypothesis about the simultaneous generational changes in LFPRs and disability during the analyzed period.