Unclaimed Injuries and Workers' Compensation Adequacy

摘要

The workers' compensation system was designed to provide health care and compensation for workers with occupational injuries or illness without regard to fault. Nearly all workers are covered by workers' compensation insurance, but not every worker that is injured on the job actually receives workers' compensation benefits. This project examines how many workers fail to file for compensation from job-related injuries, and what factors appear to explain this failure. It also examines the impact of this failure on the adequacy of wage replacement that workers receive from the workers' compensation system. By doing so, it sheds important light on several important issues regarding the measurement of the economic consequences of workplace injuries, particularly for underserved populations. This study examines the filing decision of injured workers using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), a nationally representative survey with detailed information on demographic variables as well as occupational injuries and workers' compensation filing.