IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/uwp/jhriss/v31y1996i2p331-358.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Factors Determining Participation of the Elderly in Supplemental Security Income

Author

Listed:
  • Kathleen McGarry

Abstract

The same low participation rates which plague many welfare programs have been observed among the elderly eligible for Supplemental Security Income (SSI). A number of hypotheses have been offered to explain the low enrollment, but none has attracted universal acceptance. In this paper I use the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to examine the participation of the elderly in SSI. Because of the high quality of the data, I am able to determine eligibility more accurately than in most previous studies. In this sample, only 56 percent of those whom I determine to be eligible for SSI are presently receiving benefits. I model the decision to participate as a probit equation, but modify the likelihood function to account for measurement error in the expected benefit. The results indicate that participation is primarily determined by the financial situation of the eligible individuals. Although all those eligible for SSI are poor, those with little in the way of other resources are significantly more likely to participate. This finding differs from widespread beliefs that eligible individuals are discouraged by the difficulty of the application process, or that many are uninformed about the program.

Suggested Citation

  • Kathleen McGarry, 1996. "Factors Determining Participation of the Elderly in Supplemental Security Income," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 31(2), pages 331-358.
    • Handle: RePEc:uwp:jhriss:v:31:y:1996:i:2:p:331-358
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/146066
    Download Restriction: A subscripton is required to access pdf files. Pay per article is available.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Denis Anne, 2019. "Aides à la mobilité et insertion sociale," Erudite Ph.D Dissertations, Erudite, number ph19-03 edited by Yannick L'Horty.
    2. Bargain, Olivier & Immervoll, Herwig & Viitamäki, Heikki, 2007. "How Tight Are Safety-Nets in Nordic Countries? Evidence from Finnish Register Data," IZA Discussion Papers 3004, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Momi Dahan & Udi Nisan, 2006. "Low Take-up Rates: The Role of Information," CESifo Working Paper Series 1829, CESifo.
    4. Momi Dahan & Udi Nisan, 2010. "The effect of benefits level on take-up rates: evidence from a natural experiment," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 17(2), pages 151-173, April.
    5. Sylvain Chareyron & Patrick Domingues & Lucie Fotsa Lieno-Gaillardon, 2021. "Does Social Interaction Matter for Welfare Participation?," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 141, pages 49-70.
    6. Sylvain Chareyron & Patrick Domingues, 2018. "Take‐Up of Social Assistance Benefits: The Case of the French Homeless," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 64(1), pages 170-191, March.
    7. Herber, Stefanie P. & Kalinowski, Michael, 2016. "Non-take-up of Student Financial Aid: A Microsimulation for Germany," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145727, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    8. Stef Konijn & Derk Visser & Maria Zumbuehl, 2023. "Quantifying the Non-Take-up of a Need-Based Student Grant in the Netherlands," De Economist, Springer, vol. 171(3), pages 239-266, September.
    9. Olivier Bargain & Herwig Immervoll & Heikki Viitamäki, 2012. "No claim, no pain. Measuring the non-take-up of social assistance using register data," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 10(3), pages 375-395, September.
    10. Helen Levy & David R. Weir, 2010. "Take-up of Medicare Part D: Results From the Health and Retirement Study," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 65(4), pages 492-501.
    11. Sylvain Chareyron & Patrick Domingues, 2015. "Take-up of Social Assistance Benefits: The case of Homeless," TEPP Working Paper 2015-07, TEPP.
    12. Herber, Stefanie P. & Kalinowski, Michael, 2016. "Non-take-up of student financial aid: A microsimulation for Germany," BERG Working Paper Series 109, Bamberg University, Bamberg Economic Research Group.
    13. Wong, Sandy, 2016. "Geographies of medicalized welfare: Spatial analysis of supplemental security income in the U.S., 2000–2010," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 9-19.
    14. Helen Levy & David Weir, 2007. "Take-Up of Medicare Part D and the SSA Subsidy: Early Results from the Health and Retirement Study," Working Papers wp163, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    15. Mary Daly & Richard V. Burkhauser, 2003. "The Supplemental Security Income Program," NBER Chapters, in: Means-Tested Transfer Programs in the United States, pages 79-140, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. A. S. Yelowitz, "undated". "Public Policy and Health Care Choices of the Elderly: Evidence from the Medicare Buy-In Program," Institute for Research on Poverty Discussion Papers 1136-97, University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty.
    17. Kathleen McGarry & Robert F. Schoeni, 2015. "Understanding Participation in SSI," Working Papers wp319, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    18. Sylvain Chareyron, 2016. "Le non-recours aux aides sociales sous conditions de ressources," Erudite Ph.D Dissertations, Erudite, number ph16-01 edited by Yannick L'Horty & François Legendre.
    19. Susan E Mayer, 2000. "Why Welfare Caseloads Fluctuate: A Review of Research on AFDC, SSI, and the Food Stamps Program," Treasury Working Paper Series 00/07, New Zealand Treasury.
    20. Sylvain Chareyron, 2018. "Pauvreté et non-recours aux dispositifs sociaux : l’étude du RSA « socle seul »," Economie & Prévision, La Documentation Française, vol. 0(1), pages 41-59.
    21. Marchand, J. & Smeeding, T., 2016. "Poverty and Aging," Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, in: Piggott, John & Woodland, Alan (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 905-950, Elsevier.
      • Marchand, Joseph & Smeeding, Timothy, 2016. "Poverty and Aging," Working Papers 2016-11, University of Alberta, Department of Economics, revised 20 Nov 2016.
    22. Dahlia K. Remler & Jason E. Rachlin & Sherry A. Glied, 2001. "What can the take-up of other programs teach us about how to improve take-up of health insurance programs?," NBER Working Papers 8185, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    23. Friedberg, Leora, 1999. "The effect of old age assistance on retirement," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 213-232, February.
    24. Stefanie P. Herber & Michael Kalinowski, 2016. "Non-Take-Up of Student Financial Aid: A Microsimulation for Germany," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 844, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    25. Richard W. Johnson, 2021. "Policy Options to Reduce the Black‐White Gap in Retirement Security," Journal of Elder Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 1(2), pages 83-112, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:uwp:jhriss:v:31:y:1996:i:2:p:331-358. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://jhr.uwpress.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.