Overview
Lakshmi K. Raut is a research economist at the Social Security Administration's Office of Research, Evaluation and Statistics (ORES). His primary contribution to the DI literature is a 2017 competing-risks analysis of DI exit probabilities, published in the Social Security Bulletin (Vol. 77, No. 3). The paper applies the Fine-Gray subdistribution hazard model to estimate cumulative incidence functions for three simultaneous DI exit causes — death, recovery, and OASI conversion — correcting the independence assumption in conventional Kaplan-Meier estimates used in prior OCACT actuarial studies.
Key Contributions
- Applied competing-risks methodology (Fine and Gray 1999) to SSA CWHS administrative data to estimate death, recovery, and retirement-conversion probabilities jointly
- Documented that musculoskeletal and mental disorder beneficiaries have the highest recovery rates AND the lowest death rates — the impairment types driving DI roll growth also produce the longest average durations
- Identified that women entering the DI rolls have lower death exit rates AND lower recovery exit rates than men with comparable impairments and ages — the double-low mechanism driving female enrollment share growth
- Compared 1980s and 1990s entrant cohorts and found death rates declined across all subgroups while recovery rates were largely stagnant — providing direct empirical evidence that DI mortality improvement does not imply improving work capacity
- Paper's acknowledgments cite Javier Meseguer, David Pattison, and Alexander Strand for methodological guidance
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