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Screening disability insurance applications

Author: Philip de Jong, And Maarten Lindeboom, And Bas van der Klaauw, And

Published in: Journal of the European Economic Association 2011, vol. 9, no. 1, pp.106-129

Summary of Working paper 2006:15

This paper investigates the effects of stricter screening of disability insurance applications. A large-scale experiment was setup where in two of the 26 Dutch regions case workers of the disability insurance administration were instructed to screen applications more stringently. The empirical results show that stricter screening reduces long-term sickness absenteeism and disability insurance applications. We find evidence for direct effects of stricter screening on work resumption during the period of sickness absence and for self-screening by potential disability insurance applicants. Stricter screening seems to improve targeting efficiency, without inducing negative spillover effects to the inflow into unemployment insurance. The costs of stricter screening are only a small fraction of the monetary benefits.
Keywords: disability insurance, experiment, policy evaluation, sickness absenteeism, self-screening
JEL-codes: J26, J65

This paper investigates the effects of stricter screening of disability insurance applications. A large-scale experiment was setup where in two of the 26 Dutch regions case workers of the disability insurance administration were instructed to screen applications more stringently. The empirical results show that stricter screening reduces long-term sickness absenteeism and disability insurance applications. We find evidence for direct effects of stricter screening on work resumption during the period of sickness absence and for self-screening by potential disability insurance applicants. Stricter screening seems to improve targeting efficiency, without inducing negative spillover effects to the inflow into unemployment insurance. The costs of stricter screening are only a small fraction of the monetary benefits.

Keywords: disability insurance, experiment, policy evaluation, sickness absenteeism, self-screening
JEL-codes: J26, J65

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