Department of Economics and Finance, Estonian Business School, Tallinn, Estonia.
Methods Lab, Estonian Business School, Tallinn, Estonia.
J Occup Rehabil. 2024 Mar;34(1):116-127. doi: 10.1007/s10926-023-10102-w. Epub 2023 Mar 24.
The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of the Estonian active labor market reform in 2016, which introduced a new policy concerning vocational rehabilitation services. As a research question, we investigate how such services may have affected the employment outcomes of people with mental and/or physical impairments.
Our sample includes 9244 people from 2016 to 2020, with a mean age of 46 years. Due to multiple entries to the services, we have more than 11,000 cases with over 100,000 monthly observations. We use propensity score matching in combination with fixed effects panel regressions to analyze how the completion of the scheduled rehabilitation plan affected monthly employment duration.
Our findings indicate that completing the rehabilitation service results on average in 2.6 months longer post-rehabilitation employment, compared to matched individuals who discontinued the service. This effect was larger when already employed and male participants entered the service, while weaker effects were observed in the case of individuals with only mental disabilities.
Overall, we conclude that while completing the scheduled rehabilitation plan has a positive effect on employment outcomes, still maintaining employment status seems to remain a challenge, based on the relatively modest effect sizes. Thus, we question the economic arguments behind the reform.
本研究旨在考察 2016 年爱沙尼亚积极劳动力市场改革的效果，该改革引入了一项新的职业康复服务政策。作为研究问题，我们调查这些服务可能如何影响精神和/或身体残疾人士的就业结果。
我们的样本包括 2016 年至 2020 年的 9244 人，平均年龄为 46 岁。由于多次进入服务，我们有超过 11000 个案例，每月观察超过 100000 次。我们使用倾向评分匹配结合固定效应面板回归来分析完成预定康复计划如何影响每月就业持续时间。
我们的研究结果表明，与退出服务的匹配个体相比，完成康复服务平均可使康复后的就业时间延长 2.6 个月。当已经就业的男性参与者进入服务时，这种效果更大，而仅患有精神残疾的个体的效果较弱。
总体而言，我们的结论是，尽管完成预定的康复计划对就业结果有积极影响，但根据相对适度的效应大小，维持就业状态似乎仍然是一个挑战。因此，我们对改革背后的经济论点提出质疑。
