JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. University of Wisconsin Press andThe Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Human Resources. ABSTRACT This paper examines disabilities of older women and men and analyzes gender differences in the effect of disabilities on labor force participation using information on men and women aged 51-61 from the early release of the first wave of the Health and Retirement Survey. Our results demonstrate the importance of using multiple measures of disabilities (we use work limitations, functional limitations, and specific health impairments) to document gender differences and understand the connections between disabilities and work. We find that men and women have different rates of disability, and that both men and women working in occupations with greater physical requirements exhibit higher rates of disabilities than other workers. We also find that measures of functional limitations and health impairments both have significant negative effects on labor force participation. The effects of disabilities on labor force participation are larger for men and single women than for married women.

Parental and family inputs are particularly important for children with disabilities receiving benefits from the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. These children often need disability or health-related care, and nonfamily sources provide only limited access. This is the first study to analyze family and nonfamily caregiving for these children with disabilities based on nationally representative quantitative data from the National Survey of SSI Children and Families (NSCF), a survey focusing on SSI recipient children with disabilities. The data suggests substantial variability in the need for caregiving among children on SSI. We find that there is also substantial variation in family inputs related to parental education, living arrangements, the presence of other children of preschool age and other factors that affect the quality and quantity of caregiving. Our analysis confirms that family caregiving is much more substantial for these children than nonfamily caregiving, and that caregiving from both sources is associated with various indicators of the nature and extent of disabilities. We find some -but weaker -evidence of an association between the child's disabilities and parental employment. Overall, while there is some substitution between parental employment and caregiving there appears to be a substantial net burden on the family arising from the child's needs for caregiving. We also find that there are significant predictors of family caregiving and parental employment that are unrelated to the child's disabilities. Most of these show opposite relationships to caregiving and parental employment -negative for one, positive for the other or vice versa. However, better parental education substantially increases the odds of both caregiving and parental employment. Parental disability sharply reduces the odds of parental employment and somewhat increases the odds of reported family caregiving. Overall, the challenges are especially substantial for single mothers who cannot share the extra burden of raising a child with severe disabilities with a spouse.

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Youth who receive cash benefits from the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, the largest federal program that provides cash payments to low-income youth with severe disabilities and their families, face several challenges in transitioning into adulthood. From a human capital development perspective, the disabilities and health problems during childhood and early adulthood as well as the family environment form important inputs that will likely influence long-term adult outcomes. This paper provides a review of some of the challenges these youth face in transitioning into adulthood using a life-cycle framework and presents descriptive statistics on their challenges and outcomes into early adulthood. Our summary illustrates the challenges that SSI youth face as they make the transition to adulthood and shows how the long-term employment and program outcomes of this population have changed over time. The findings provide a broader framework for the remaining five papers in this issue and underscore the need for rigorous testing of promising interventions and a carefully balanced mix of statistical and econometric analyses based on longitudinal data sources with a long time horizon.

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