Wage Insurance for Displaced Workers

Wage insurance provides income support to displaced workers who find reemployment at a lower wage. We analyze wage insurance in the context of the U.S. Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program by merging linked employer-employee Census data to TAA petitions and leveraging a discontinuity in eligibility based on worker age. Wage insurance eligibility increases short-run employment probabilities and leads to higher long-run cumulative earnings. We find shorter non-employment durations largely drive increased long-term earnings among workers eligible for wage insurance. Our results are quantitatively consistent with a standard non-stationary partial equilibrium search model. The program is self-financing even under conservative assumptions.

工资保险为重新就业但工资较低的失业工人提供收入支持。我们通过将关联的雇主 - 雇员人口普查数据与贸易调整援助（TAA）申请相结合，并利用基于工人年龄的资格不连续性，在美国贸易调整援助计划的背景下分析工资保险。有工资保险资格会增加短期就业概率，并带来更高的长期累计收入。我们发现，较短的失业持续时间在很大程度上促使有工资保险资格的工人长期收入增加。我们的结果在数量上与标准的非平稳局部均衡搜索模型一致。即使在保守假设下，该计划也能自筹资金。