Measuring the Impacts of Health Conditions on Work Incapacity - Evidence from the British Household Panel Survey

Abstract

This chapter aims to accurately identify the causal pathway between health and claiming disability benefits (DBs) by addressing several of the modelling problems in the existing literature. It uses nationally representative, individual‐level, longitudinal survey data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) to model influences on the probability of claiming DBs. The chapter also includes multiple health conditions to allow control confounding of the estimated effects of particular health conditions. The results reveal that a positive association between depression and the probability of claiming DBs, but this effect is reduced, though remains statistically significant and positive, whe..