Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Empirical evidence shows substantial gender disparities in self-reported work limitations. I investigate whether the differentials reflect differences in actual work limitations or differences in reporting styles. Using anchoring vignettes approach, I examine how males and females characterize the severity of identical work limitations associated with pain, cardiovascular health, and depression vignettes in the Health and Retirement Study. Preliminary analyses show that men tend to classify identical work limitations as more serious compared to women. Furthermore, traditional empirical models not accounting for reporting differences find that self-reported work limitations do not predict disability benefit applications for women as much as for men. I show that this differential is mostly reconciled once I adjust the self-reported work limitation for reporting heterogeneity. These results suggest caution in relying on self-reported disability measures to explain disability application behavior for men and women.