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Abstract
The United States workforce is aging. At the same time more people have chronic conditions, for longer periods.
Given these trends the importance of work disability, physical or nervous problems that limit a person’s type or
amount of work, is increasing. No research has examined transitions among multiple levels of work disability,
recovery from work disability, or trends. Limited research has focused on work disability among African
Americans and Hispanics, or separately for women and men. We examined these areas using data from 30,563
adults in the 1968–2015 Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We estimated annual probabilities of work disability,
recovery, and death with multinomial logistic Markov models. Microsimulations accounting for age and education
estimated outcomes for African American, Hispanic, and non-Hispanic white women and men. Results
from these nationally representative data suggested that the majority of Americans experience work disability
during working life. Most spells ended with recovery or reduced severity. Among women, African Americans and
Hispanics had less moderate and severe work disability than whites. Among men, African Americans became
severely work disabled more often than whites, recovered from severe spells more often and had shorter severe
spells, yet had more severe work disability at age 65. Hispanic men were more likely to report at least one spell
of severe work disability than whites; they also had substantially more recovery from severe work disability, and
a lower percentage of working years with work disability. Among African Americans and Hispanics, men were
considerably more likely than women to have severe work disability at age 65. Work disability declined significantly
across the study period for all groups. Although work disability has declined over several decades, it
remains common. Results suggest that the majority of work disability spells end with recovery, underscoring the
importance of rehabilitation and workplace accommodation.