Ben-Shalom and Stapleton 2012 — The Work Experiences of New SSI Beneficiaries A Longitudinal Perspective

Summary

Four-page policy brief summarizing longitudinal return-to-work statistics for the 2001 Supplemental Security Income (SSI) adult award cohort ($n = 358{,}187$), tracked through December 2007. Key finding: longitudinal rates of benefit suspension for work are nearly four times the cross-sectional rate, driven heavily by the under-40 subgroup. The brief explicitly parallels the disability insurance (DI) longitudinal statistics from Liu and Stapleton (2011), highlighting the complication that many SSI awardees simultaneously receive DI benefits.

Key Claims

• Six-year longitudinal rates: $19.4\%$ had positive countable earnings in at least one month; $8.4\%$ achieved Section 1619(b) status; $9.8\%$ had benefits suspended or terminated for work (STW) — vs. $\approx 2\%$ cross-sectional rate ($\approx 4\times$ difference)
• Age gradient is steep: ages 18–19 $\to$ $19.2\%$ STW in at least one month; ages 20–39 $\to$ $14.9\%$; ages 40–49 $\to$ $6.3\%$; ages 50–61 $\to$ $3.7\%$; ages 62–64 $\to$ $1.8\%$; under-40s are $43\%$ of the cohort but account for $\approx 73\%$ of nonpayment-due-to-work months
• DI-SSI overlap complicates interpretation: $46.9\%$ of 1619(b) months involved simultaneous DI receipt; only $4.5\%$ of the full cohort achieved 1619(b) without DI; only $5.5\%$ forgone SSI without DI at the same time
• Average nonpayment-for-work duration is less than $2$ months over $6.5$ years ($2.5\%$ of the period); SSI awardees were receiving DI in $54.4\%$ of those nonpayment months
• Service enrollment is low: $\approx 10\%$ of the 1998 cohort enrolled in Social Security Administration (SSA)-funded employment services by 2007; $78.3\%$ who achieved 1619(b) had never enrolled in services
• Employment and work-incentive use declined from 1996 cohort ($9.4\%$ 1619(b) by year 6) to 2001 cohort ($8.4\%$), attributed to the 2001 recession; Ticket to Work (TTW) rollout (2002–2004) produced a slight increase in service enrollment
• Roughly $80\%$ of beneficiaries who forgo benefits for work never enrolled in SSA-funded services — consistent with DI finding in Liu and Stapleton (2011); savings from broad-based initiatives may be limited if they serve mostly those who would have returned to work anyway

Concepts Introduced or Extended

• DI Return-to-Work Milestones

Entities Mentioned

• Yonatan Ben-Shalom
• David Stapleton
• Social Security Administration

Quotes

"Longitudinal statistics, which provide a more complete picture of these efforts than do cross-sectional statistics, are critical to understanding the extent to which beneficiaries are working over the long run and whether current policy is helping or hindering their attempts to work."

My Take

The brief's most important contribution is quantifying the cross-sectional/longitudinal gap ($4\times$) and making the age gradient concrete. The DI-SSI overlap complication is underappreciated in policy discussions — the "SSI return-to-work" rate looks better in part because SSI awardees are younger and because many are already attached to DI (which has its own work incentive structure). The near-zero net nonpayment duration ($\approx 2$ months over $6.5$ years) also suggests that most benefit suspensions are brief spells rather than true exits, which has obvious implications for fiscal savings estimates.