In a Sunday, January 20, 2008, New York Times Magazine article entitled "Unintended Consequences," Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt wrote:

"...the economists Daron Acemoglu and Joshua Angrist once asked.... How did the A.D.A. affect employment among the disabled?

Their conclusion was rather startling.... [They] found that when the A.D.A. was enacted in 1992 [sic], it led to a sharp drop in the employment of disabled workers."

The gist of the "Unintended Consequences" article is that well-meaning laws sometimes backfire.

In 2004 two researchers, Andrew J. Houtenville and Richard V. Burkhauser, concluded in a study entitled "Did the Employment of People with Disabilities Decline in the 1990s, and was the ADA Responsible? A Replication and Robustness Check of Acemoglu and Angrist (2001) – Research Brief:"

"The relative employment of working-age people with disabilities declined in the 1990s. Based on our review of the evidence, however, the ADA is not the likely cause of this decline."

Houtenville and Burkhauser are professors in Cornell University’s Employment and Disability Institute. Our (albeit, non-professional researchers status) search of the internet on this topic unearthed no rebuttal to the Cornell piece by Acemoglu and Angrist or any other researchers.

Our opinion is that the ADA is so significant that it is now firmly woven into the fabric of American culture and that qualified people with disabilities (and who among us is immune from disability?) will have the same opportunities in the workplace as everyone else. We welcome your comments, and the full articles are available below. They are in a PDF format, so you will need Adobe Reader to view them.

Unintended Consequences.

Did the Employment of People with Disabilities Decline in the 1990s, and was the ADA Responsible? A Replication and Robustness Check of Acemoglu and Angrist (2001) – Research Brief.

The New York Times and Job Market Research: The Aging Workforce

In 2002, The New York Times formed, in collaboration with Monster.com, an entity “to focus attention on key issues and trends affecting the recruiting industry.” The entity is called “job market research.” Its stated goal is to keep abreast of hiring practices in key industries. The methodology they use is to commission third parties to conduct surveys of employers on seminal issues.

A recent survey conducted by Hewitt Associates focused on diversity. Of interest to us, and perhaps to our blog readers, is a section in it called, “The Aging Workforce.”

Specifically, the survey found that by 2010, the U.S. workforce will:

• Increase by 29% in the 45-64 age group


• Increase by 14% in the 65+ age group


• Decline 1% in the 18-44 age group

Good news for those of you who, like too many of us, are gaining senior status among our youthful colleagues. As George Bernard Shaw famously said, “Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.”