IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wil/wileco/2013-07.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The New Safety Net? Supplemental Security Income after Welfare Reform

Author

Abstract

Over the past twenty years, the Supplemental Security Income Program (SSI), which provides federally-funded income support for disabled individuals, has become one of the most important means-tested cash aid programs in the United States. This growth has been accompanied by growing concerns about the nature of the program and its role as a "new safety net." In this paper, I use state panel data, exploiting variation both across states and over time, to examine the relationship between welfare reform and SSI disabled caseloads for both adults and children. I also examine whether the relationship between SSI participation and other factors (economic, health-related, and political) has been fundamentally altered in the aftermath of welfare reform. Results suggest that welfare reform significantly increased SSI participation, and changed the relationship between other conditions and SSI participation. Notably, the SSI program has become more responsive to business cycles for women and children since welfare reform.

Suggested Citation

  • Lucie Schmidt, 2013. "The New Safety Net? Supplemental Security Income after Welfare Reform," Department of Economics Working Papers 2013-07, Department of Economics, Williams College.
    • Handle: RePEc:wil:wileco:2013-07
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://web.williams.edu/Economics/wp/schmidt_ssi_sept_2013_final.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lucie Schmidt & Purvi Sevak, 2004. "AFDC, SSI, and Welfare Reform Aggressiveness: Caseload Reductions versus Caseload Shifting," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 39(3).
    2. Jordan D. Matsudaira & Rebecca M. Blank, 2014. "The Impact of Earnings Disregards on the Behavior of Low‐Income Families," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(1), pages 7-35, January.
    3. Gruber, Jonathan & Kubik, Jeffrey D., 1997. "Disability insurance rejection rates and the labor supply of older workers," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 1-23, April.
    4. A. Colin Cameron & Jonah B. Gelbach & Douglas L. Miller, 2011. "Robust Inference With Multiway Clustering," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(2), pages 238-249, April.
    5. Marianne P. Bitler & Jonah B. Gelbach & Hilary W. Hoynes, 2006. "Welfare Reform and Children's Living Arrangements," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 41(1).
    6. John Bound & Richard V Burkhauser & Austin Nichols, 2003. "Tracking The Household Income Of Ssdi And Ssi Applicants," Research in Labor Economics, in: Worker Well-Being and Public Policy, pages 113-158, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    7. Howard P. Marvel, 1982. "An Economic Analysis of the Operation of Social Security Disability Insurance," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 17(3), pages 393-412.
    8. David H. Autor & Mark G. Duggan, 2003. "The Rise in the Disability Rolls and the Decline in Unemployment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(1), pages 157-206.
    9. Jacob Alex Klerman & Steven J. Haider, 2004. "A Stock-Flow Analysis of the Welfare Caseload," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 39(4).
    10. Bruce D. Meyer & Wallace K. C. Mok & James X. Sullivan, 2009. "The Under-Reporting of Transfers in Household Surveys: Its Nature and Consequences," Working Papers 0903, Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago.
    11. Schoeni, R.F. & Blank, R.M., 2000. "What Has Welfare Reform Accomplished? Impacts on Welfare Participation, Employment, Income, Poverty, and Family Structure," Papers 00-02, RAND - Labor and Population Program.
    12. Nicole Maestas & Kathleen J. Mullen & Alexander Strand, 2013. "Does Disability Insurance Receipt Discourage Work? Using Examiner Assignment to Estimate Causal Effects of SSDI Receipt," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(5), pages 1797-1829, August.
    13. Subramanian, S. V. & Kawachi, Ichiro & Kennedy, Bruce P., 2001. "Does the state you live in make a difference? Multilevel analysis of self-rated health in the US," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 9-19, July.
    14. Mark G. Duggan & Melissa Schettini Kearney, 2007. "The impact of child SSI enrollment on household outcomes," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(4), pages 861-886.
    15. Bowen Garrett & Sherry Glied, 2000. "Does state AFDC generosity affect child SSI participation?," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(2), pages 275-295.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lex Borghans & Anne C. Gielen & Erzo F. P. Luttmer, 2014. "Social Support Substitution and the Earnings Rebound: Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity in Disability Insurance Reform," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 6(4), pages 34-70, November.
    2. Mark Duggan & Perry Singleton & Jae Song, 2005. "Aching to Retire? The Rise in the Full Retirement Age and its Impact on the Disability Rolls," NBER Working Papers 11811, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Burns, Marguerite & Dague, Laura, 2017. "The effect of expanding Medicaid eligibility on Supplemental Security Income program participation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 20-34.
    4. MELISSA McINERNEY & KOSALI SIMON, 2012. "The Effect of State Workers’ Compensation Program Changes on the Use of Federal Social Security Disability Insurance," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(1), pages 57-88, January.
    5. Bruce D. Meyer & Wallace K. C. Mok, 2017. "Disability, Taxes, Transfers, and the Economic Well-Being of Women," NBER Chapters, in: Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 32, pages 211-253, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Duggan, Mark & Singleton, Perry & Song, Jae, 2007. "Aching to retire? The rise in the full retirement age and its impact on the social security disability rolls," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(7-8), pages 1327-1350, August.
    7. Stith Sarah S., 2022. "Effects of work requirements for food assistance eligibility on disability claiming," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Sciendo & Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 11(1), pages 1-31, January.
    8. Gordon B. Dahl & Anne C. Gielen, 2021. "Intergenerational Spillovers in Disability Insurance," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 13(2), pages 116-150, April.
    9. Bíró, Anikó & Elek, Péter, 2020. "Job loss, disability insurance and health expenditure," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    10. Katie M. Jajtner & Sophie Mitra & Christine Fountain & Austin Nichols, 2020. "Rising Income Inequality Through a Disability Lens: Trends in the United States 1981–2018," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 151(1), pages 81-114, August.
    11. Chiara Dal Bianco, 2023. "Disability Insurance and the Effects of Return-to-work Policies," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 49, pages 351-373, July.
    12. repec:osf:socarx:pj8d9_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Andreas Haller & Stefan Staubli & Josef Zweimüller, 2024. "Designing Disability Insurance Reforms: Tightening Eligibility Rules or Reducing Benefits?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 92(1), pages 79-110, January.
    14. Moore, Timothy J., 2015. "The employment effects of terminating disability benefits," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 30-43.
    15. Lynn A. Karoly & Paul S. Davies, 2004. "The Impact of the 1996 SSI Childhood Disability Reforms: Evidence from Matched SIPP-SSA Data," Working Papers wp079, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    16. Mathilde Godard & Pierre Koning & Maarten Lindeboom, 2024. "Application and Award Responses to Stricter Screening in Disability Insurance," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 59(5), pages 1353-1386.
    17. Mark Duggan & Melissa S. Kearney & Stephanie Rennane, 2015. "The Supplemental Security Income Program," NBER Chapters, in: Economics of Means-Tested Transfer Programs in the United States, Volume 2, pages 1-58, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Gabrielle Pepin, 2022. "The effects of welfare time limits on access to financial resources: Evidence from the 2010s," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 88(4), pages 1343-1372, April.
    19. Stefan Staubli, 2009. "Tightening the Purse Strings: The Effect of Stricter DI Eligibility Criteria on Labor Supply," NRN working papers 2009-30, The Austrian Center for Labor Economics and the Analysis of the Welfare State, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    20. Mathilde Godard & Maarten Lindeboom & Pierre Koning, 2018. "Targeting disability insurance applications with screening," Post-Print halshs-01960488, HAL.
    21. David H. Autor & Mark G. Duggan, 2006. "The Growth in the Social Security Disability Rolls: A Fiscal Crisis Unfolding," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 20(3), pages 71-96, Summer.

    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:wil:wileco:2013-07. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Greg Phelan (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/edwilus.html .

    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.