About half of all disability-insurance applicants are eventually awarded benefits, and only rarely re-enter the labor force.

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Studies of the EITC expansions enacted in the 1980s and 1990s found those expansions induced more than half a million people to enter the labor force.

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It is our expectation that as the economy strengthens later this year the (labor) participation rate will stop declining, as there is already a large pool of potential workers on the sidelines who are likely to re-enter the labor force if conditions improve.

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