Roisin O'Neill

Does Unemployment Insurance Matter More for Workers with Disabilities?  Disability and the 2020 CARES Expansion of Unemployment Insurance (with Doug Kruse and Shailee Manandhar)  (Revise & Resubmit at ILR Review)

In response to the pandemic recession, the 2020 CARES Act expanded eligibility and payments for Unemployment Insurance (UI). UI and the CARES Act may be more salient for people with disabilities than for those without disabilities given their higher rates of job loss, lower personal and family incomes, and greater obstacles in finding jobs. Using March 2008-2023 CPS data, we find: 1) disability is linked to higher UI receipt and UI values as a percent of personal and family incomes; 2) the CARES UI supplement had especially favorable effects on incomes and poverty status for workers with disabilities in 2020; and 3) workers with disabilities who receive UI are especially likely to be employed the following March, an effect that may have been magnified by the CARES UI supplement. The results suggest that UI may play a salutary role in maintaining the health and job readiness of workers with disabilities. 

 Paid Family Leave, Fathers' Leave-Taking, and the Child Penalty (Job Market Paper) 

This paper aims to estimate the effects of fathers’ leave-taking on the child penalty that mothers face in the US, using variation in state Temporary Disability Insurance for pregnant mothers and Paid Family Leave policies. Gender inequality in labor markets persists largely due to the unequal distribution of childcare. If parental leave policies encourage fathers to take paternity leave, they could narrow the gender gap in employment and hours worked that arises immediately after childbirth. Fathers’ use of leave can also reduce the stigma around family leave and increase female labor force attachment, which would all improve gender equality. Paid family leave, temporary disability insurance, and the combination of the two affect mothers’ and fathers’ leave-taking differently, so I will use this variation in state policies, a staggered difference-in-differences methodology, and data from the Current Population Survey, American Community Survey, and American Time Use Survey to estimate the effects of fathers’ leave-taking on the child penalty in earnings and employment. I will explore heterogeneity by income, marital status, and other demographics factors, and will also explore how fathers who do or do not take paternity leave allocate their time after having children.

How Do Minimum and Subminimum Wages Affect Employment of People with Disabilities? (with Doug Kruse and Shailee Manandhar)

While there has been extensive analysis of the effects of minimum wage laws on employment in general, there has been no direct analysis of their effect on the employment of people with disabilities. In addition, there has not been rigorous analysis of the effects of the subminimum wage provision of the Fair Standards Labor Act, which allows employers to pay subminimum wages to workers with disabilities under certain circumstances. This practice is controversial; the Biden administration and many federal legislators support phasing out subminimum wage employment, and many states have been phasing such programs out. In this study we are using American Community Survey and Current Population Survey data over the 2008-2022 period, combined with state-level data on changes in minimum and subminimum wage provisions, to do a stacked triple-difference analysis of their effects on the employment and earnings of people with disabilities.