The last few decades have seen rapid growth in the size of the Veterans Affairs Disability Compensation (VADC) program, which provides tax‐free cash benefits to veterans with disabilities connected to military service. Given this recent growth, VADC is on pace to eclipse Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) to become the largest U.S. disability program by expenditures. Although there are decades of causal research on the design and impacts of SSDI, there is no comparable body of evidence for VADC. In this Policy Insight, we discuss how causal evidence was produced for Social Security‐administered disability programs and why there is a lack of this evidence for VADC. Chief among the explanations is a lack of VADC data access available to the broader researcher community, access that Social Security facilitates for the programs it administers. However, even with this access, the proliferation of benefits and services targeted to service‐disabled veterans implies that existing earnings loss studies and causal estimates of the impact of VADC benefit receipt on any given outcome of interest likely are mismeasurements of true effects. We conclude with recommendations for restructuring approaches to research design to accurately estimate impacts of VADC benefits as well as the wide array of other programs supporting service‐disabled veterans.

中文翻译：

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退伍军人事务部残疾赔偿：可能是美国最大的残疾计划，但我们对其对服役伤残退伍军人的影响了解多少？


过去几十年来，退伍军人事务部残疾补偿 （VADC） 计划的规模迅速增长，该计划为与服兵役有关的残疾退伍军人提供免税现金福利。鉴于最近的增长，VADC 正在超越社会保障残疾保险 （SSDI），成为美国支出最大的残疾计划。尽管对 SSDI 的设计和影响进行了数十年的因果研究，但没有可比的证据证明 VADC。在这份政策洞察中，我们讨论了如何为社会保障管理的残疾计划提供因果证据，以及为什么缺乏 VADC 的这些证据。其中最主要的解释是缺乏可供更广泛的研究人员社区使用的 VADC 数据访问权限，而社会保障局为其管理的项目提供了便利。然而，即使有这种访问权限，针对伤残退伍军人的福利和服务的激增意味着现有的收入损失研究和 VADC 福利接收对任何给定利益结果影响的因果估计可能是对真实效果的错误估计。最后，我们提出了对研究设计的重组方法的建议，以准确估计 VADC 福利以及支持服役残疾退伍军人的广泛其他计划的影响。