Alaska Employment Law

The New York Times Magazine for Sunday the 20th carried an article entitled “Unintended Consequences: Why do well-meaning laws backfire?” by the authors of Freakonomics, Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt.   One example of such laws, they say, is the Americans with Disabilities Act, relying on the article in the Journal of Political Economy by Daron Acemoglu and Joshua Angrist. 

Dubner/Levitt run a blog (also called Freakonomics) that links to the Journal article and whose Comments section will undoubtedly carry the ongoing debate about whether the ADA has backfired. 

The conclusion of the Journal article is this:

The [1988-1997] CPS data show a post-ADA decline in the relative employment of disabled men and women aged 21–39, with no change in relative wages. The deterioration in the relative employment position of disabled workers began in 1993 for men and in 1992 for women, the first two years the ADA was in effect. These results are unchanged by controlling for pre-ADA trends in employment of the disabled or for the increase in the fraction of people receiving disability insurance and supplemental security income (SSI). Together these findings lead us to conclude that the ADA reduced employment for disabled workers aged 21–39. The results for those aged 40–58 are more mixed. There is a post-ADA decline in the employment of disabled men aged 40–58, but no clear evidence of an effect on women aged 40–58.

Additional results suggest that employment of the disabled declined more in medium-size firms, possibly because small firms are exempt from the ADA and large firms can more easily absorb ADA-related costs.  Disemployment effects also appear to have been larger in states in which there have been more ADA-related discrimination charges. On the other hand, there is little evidence of a reduction in separation rates of the disabled. This suggests that the negative effects of the ADA may have been due more to the costs of accommodation than to the threat of lawsuits for wrongful termination, though poor measurement of separation rates may also account for this result. Finally, we find no evidence that the ADA had a negative impact on nondisabled workers. This suggests that the adverse consequences of the ADA have been limited to the protected group.