Do Disability Policies Shape How People Perceive Work Limitation? An International Perspective

This study explored the role that cross-country disability policy differences play in shaping individuals’ work limitation reporting styles. We used anchoring vignettes available in comparable U.S. and European survey data to test and adjust for reporting differences in self-reported work limitation measures. We found that disability policy generosity scores showed statistically significant predictive power for respondents’ work limitation classification scales, with the association stronger and more statistically significant at the lower end and the middle of the scale. That is, respondents under more generous disability regimes tended to apply a more inclusive (i.e., lenient) scale in classifying a mild, moderate, or severe work limitation. Because there is no natural interpretation of the magnitude of the correlation, we conducted counterfactual policy simulations to illustrate the strength of the association; for example, if the United States were to adopt more generous disability policies such as those in Sweden, there might be an associated increase of more than 36 percentage points in the proportion of Americans age 50 years and above reporting work limitation (of any severity). This research contributes to a better understanding of the role of disability policy in reporting heterogeneity in comparative disability research, an area that has been seldom studied.