term.subject="administration"

Summary: A substantial number of the service members deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since September 11, 2001, have been injured in combat operations or as a result of other deployment-related activities. In response to a request from the 11th Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation (QRMC), RAND performed a comprehensive, quantitative assessment of how injury sustained by active and reserve component service members affects their subsequent labor market earnings and the extent to which retirement and disability payments received from the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Social Security Administration compensate for earnings losses attributable to injury. This analysis compares the labor market earnings of injured service members and their spouses with the labor market earnings of uninjured service members and their spouses as many as seven years following deployment. Since the incidence of injury is likely to be correlated with characteristics of service members (e.g., pay grade, military occupation, risk-taking behavior) that could themselves be correlated with labor market outcomes, the analysis controls for a rich array of individual-level characteristics, including labor market outcomes prior to deployment. The results of the analysis show that earnings losses attributable to injury increase with injury severity and that disability payments on average more than compensate for these lost earnings. Due to disability compensation, the income of service members with serious or very serious injuries is on average about 36 percent higher four years following deployment than it would have been had they not been injured

Summary: This study examines how the deaths of service members during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have affected the subsequent labor market earnings of their surviving spouses and the extent to which survivor benefits provided by the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Social Security Administration compensate for lost household earnings. It also assesses the extent to which payments that surviving spouses and children receive compensate for earnings losses attributable to combat deaths. The labor market earnings of households experiencing a combat death in the years following deployment are compared with those of deployed but uninjured service-member households. Because the risk of combat death is likely to be correlated with characteristics of service members that could themselves affect household labor market outcomes (e.g., pay grade, military occupation, risk-taking behavior), the study controlled for a rich array of individual-level characteristics, including labor market outcomes for both service members and spouses prior to deployment. This approach includes potentially unobserved factors that are unique to specific households and fixed over time and increases the likelihood that the results capture the causal effect of combat death on household earnings