Dissertation Research: The Political Economy of Workers' Compensation Benefits: 1940-2000

工伤补偿是美国社会保险的主要形式之一，规定了因工伤亡的工人家属所获得的补偿范围。这些项目已经建立，并继续由州政府管理。所有工人赔偿方案的中心特征是各州为各种类型的伤害立法规定的福利水平。福利水平是工人就业条件的关键组成部分，在确定防止工人和雇主发生事故的激励措施方面发挥核心作用。福利时间表很复杂，有时很难跨州和时间进行比较；因此，研究的第一阶段致力于制定易于比较的跨州和随时间变化的福利水平衡量标准。研究的第二阶段审查福利水平的变化对工人工资和收入的影响，以评估福利水平的提高在多大程度上提高了工人的福祉。在各种情况下，已经表明，改善就业福利的成本往往以较低的工资形式转嫁给工人。对这些工资补偿的估计将更准确地反映过去60年来美国工人生活水平的变化。研究的最后阶段致力于分析影响各州政府在工人补偿福利方面选择的政治和经济因素。目标是记录福利变化在多大程度上受到经济因素的推动，如工资的长期增长和经济中的周期性变化，或政治因素，如政党、利益集团和改革团体的相对权力。这项研究的最终结果将是对导致今天各州实施的一系列工人补偿计划的历史路径进行全面审查。工人补偿计划通过确定在工作场所事故中受伤或死亡的工人家属的福利水平，在美国经济中发挥着至关重要的作用。到20世纪90年代末，雇主将其工资的1.5%至2.5%用于工人补偿保险。尽管工人补偿计划在20世纪初首次推出时受到工人和雇主的欢迎，但在过去50年里，雇主和工人对该计划的运作越来越不满。雇主受到保险成本上升的困扰，保险公司在承保工人补偿风险方面面临越来越多的问题，工人们对他们一直获得的福利水平表示不满。各州政府选择的福利水平在决定工人补偿制度中问题的规模方面发挥着核心作用。该研究计划将遵循三个阶段：第一，根据州法律中复杂的福利时间表，制定容易比较的跨州和不同时间的福利衡量标准；第二，通过记录福利水平增加时工资减少的程度，建立更准确的福利增加时工人获得的收益衡量标准；第三，分析决定各州选择福利水平的政治和经济影响。这份对过去60年工人补偿福利的全面分析揭示了导致我们今天看到的工人补偿计划的过程。对这一过程的理解应该有助于指导政策制定者改进这些制度，而不是回到最初导致制度变化的相同问题上。

Workers' compensation is one of the main forms of social insurance in the United States, establishing the extent of compensation received by the families of workers killed or injured in accidents arising from employment. The programs were established and continue to be administered by state governments. The central feature of all of the workers' compensation programs is the level of benefits legislated by each state for the various types of injuries. The benefit levels are key components in the employment conditions for workers and play a central role in determining the incentives for preventing accidents for both workers and employers. The benefit schedules are complex and at times difficult to compare across states and time; therefore, the first phase of the research is devoted to developing easily comparable measures of the benefit levels across states and over time. The second phase of the research examines the impact of changes in benefit levels on wages and earnings of workers to assess the extent to which the well-being of workers is enhanced by increases in benefit levels. In a variety of settings, it has been shown that the costs of improvements in employment benefits have often been passed on to workers in the form of lower wages. Estimates of these wage offsets will offer a more accurate picture of the changes in the standard of living for American workers over the past 60 years. The final phase of the research is devoted to analyzing the political and economic factors that influence the various state governments' choices concerning workers' compensation benefits. The goal is to document the extent to which changes in benefits are driven by economic factors like long-term increases in wage rates and cyclical changes in the economy or political factors, like the relative power of political parties, interest groups, and reform groups. The end result of the research will be a comprehensive examination of the historical path that has led to the array of workers' compensation programs that are in place in the various states today. Workers' Compensation programs play a crucial role in the United States economy by establishing the levels of benefits for families of workers injured or killed in workplace accidents. By the late 1990s, employers were spending 1.5 to 2.5 percent of their payrolls on workers' compensation insurance. Although workers' compensation was a popular program with workers and employers when it was first introduced in the early 1900s, employers and workers have expressed increasing dissatisfaction with the operation of the program over the past 50 years. Employers are troubled by the rising costs of insurance, insurers have faced increasing problems in underwriting workers' compensation risk, and workers have expressed dissatisfaction with the level of benefits they have been receiving. The benefit levels chosen by the various state governments play a central role in determining the scale of the problems in the workers' compensation system. The research program is designed to follow three phases: first, develop easily comparable measures of benefits across states and time from the complex benefit schedules in the state laws; second, establish more accurate measures of the gains workers receive when benefits are raised by documenting the extent to which wages are reduced when benefit levels increased; and third, analyze the political and economic influences that determine the various states' choices of benefit levels. This comprehensive analysis of workers' compensation benefits over the past 60 years illuminate the process that has led to workers' compensation programs that we see today. An understanding of the process should help guide policy makers in improving the systems without returning to the same problems that led to changes in the systems in the first place.