Summary
Using linked administrative data from program and earnings records, we summarize the 2007 employment rates of working-age (18–64) Social Security disability program beneficiaries at the national and state levels, as well as changes in employment since 1996. Substantial variation exists within the population. Disability Insurance beneficiaries and those younger than age 40 were much more likely to work relative to other Social Security beneficiaries. There are also strong regional differences in the employment rates among disability beneficiaries of working age, and these differences are persistent over time.
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Employment among Social Security Disability Program Beneficiaries, 1996–2007
Employment among Social Security Disability Program Beneficiaries, 1996–2007
Employment among Social Security Disability Program Beneficiaries, 1996–2007 by Arif Mamun, Paul O'Leary, David C. Wittenburg, and Jesse Gregory Arif Mamun is a senior researcher at Mathematica Policy Research; Paul O'Leary is an economist with the Office of Retirement and Disability Policy, Social Security Administration; David C. Wittenburg is a senior researcher at Mathematica; and Jesse Gregory is with the Department of Economics at the University of Michigan.Acknowledgments: We thank David Stapleton for helpful comments and Dawn Phelps for programming support. The research for this article was supported by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research of the US Department of Education, through its Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Employment Policy (grant no. H133B040012).The findings and conclusions presented in the Bulletin are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Social Security Administration, Mathematica Policy Research, or the University of Michigan.IntroductionSelected AbbreviationsDIDisability InsuranceMEFMaster Earnings FileSGAsubstantial gainful activitySSASocial Security AdministrationSSISupplemental Security IncomeTRFTicket Research FileTTWTicket to WorkIn recent years, there has been increasing interest in identifying interventions to promote employment for the more than 10 million working-age individuals with disabilities who receive cash benefits from the Social Security Administration's (SSA's) Disability Insurance (DI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) disability programs. Declining employment rates of individuals with disabilities and the increasing number of people who receive disability cash benefits drive the need for identifying such strategies.A key challenge in developing interventions to promote employment among disability program beneficiaries[1] is that the beneficiaries might have access to varying levels of support, particularly across states. For example, there is substantial variation in the eligibility requirements and generosity of state programs that support individuals with disabilities, such as Medicaid and state vocational rehabilitation programs. Additionally, the economic environment varies across states, which could affect decisions regarding work and program participation. An important first step in designing policies to support employment of people with disabilities is to understand how employment varies by state.[2]However, there is very limited empirical evidence on the employment outcomes of disability beneficiaries in most available survey and administrative data sources. Survey data generally include limited information on DI and SSI program status, while Social Security administrative records only include information on earnings that is necessary to calculate a benefit amount (for example, program administrative records for both DI and SSI exclude certain types of income disregarded in the calculation of benefits). This lack of information represents a major barrier to understanding whether any progress is being made in achieving the broader policy objectives of promoting employment among disability beneficiaries.This article addresses the gap in the literature that currently exists by examining the variation in employment rates of DI and SSI beneficiaries over time and across states using a consistent measure of earnings from administrative data. It also examines the extent to which observable beneficiary demographic and disability characteristics can explain the variation in employment rates. We use linked administrative data from program records on DI and SSI participation and earnings records from the Master Earnings File (MEF) to summarize the 2007 employment rates of Social Security disability beneficiaries at the national and state levels, as well as changes in employment since 1996. The linked database enables us to construct an employment measure that can be consistently applied to both SSI and DI beneficiaries across multiple years. We chose 2007 because it was the most recent year for which complete annual earnings information was available. The available program data provide information on cross sections of working-age individuals who received benefits since 1996, including the more than 10 million beneficiaries who received SSI and/or DI benefits in 2007. We first present national-level estimates of employment and then assess whether variations in employment rates exist for subgroups of beneficiaries across program titles, demographic traits, impairment conditions, and states. Next, we examine changes in employment rates from 1996 through 2007 at the national and state...See the full content of this document
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