A notice from the Social Security Administration:
In my opinion, it's all a waste of money anyway. I've never seen any of this research affect Social Security policy or practice. I wish academics all the best but I see no point in the Social Security Administration giving them public subsidies at a time when there are lines out the doors at the agency's field offices. I should say that this research is required by the agency's appropriations. The agency has no choice but to fund it.
The Social Security Administration's Office of Research, Evaluation, and Statistics is seeking competitive applications for a Retirement and Disability Research Consortium (RDRC). The RDRC is an extramural social science research program on matters related to retirement and disability policy funded by SSA through 5-year cooperative agreements.
The announcement is available on Grants.gov and may be accessed directly at https://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppId=303915. Applications are due June 8, 2018.Currently, there's a Disability Research Consortium composed of Mathematica Policy Research's Center for Studying Disability Policy and the National Bureau of Economic Research's Disability Research Center and a Retirement Research Consortium composed of Boston College, the University of Michigan, and the National Bureau of Economic Research. I don't know if this announcement is a sign that Social Security is planning a consolidation or some other change.
In my opinion, it's all a waste of money anyway. I've never seen any of this research affect Social Security policy or practice. I wish academics all the best but I see no point in the Social Security Administration giving them public subsidies at a time when there are lines out the doors at the agency's field offices. I should say that this research is required by the agency's appropriations. The agency has no choice but to fund it.
Targeted research with practical applications by people actively involved in the programs would be money better spent. Example: At a conference yesterday I heard a vocational expert who wanted to do a study of the sedentary unskilled occupations listed in the DOT, to determine if they still existed as described and how they may have changed. As anyone in the trenches knows SSA relies on descriptions of such jobs which are decades old and in many cases no longer accurate to decide claims. That information is dispositive in many thousands of claims. Shouldn’t that kind of research be a priority for limited research $?
ReplyDeleteSSA clearly doesn't care if the DOT "jobs" are accurate, real or imaginary. The DOT is merely a tool that ALJs can use to deny those they wish. SSA clearly doesn't care if the claimants can work at an SGA level, either!
DeleteThree points:
ReplyDelete(1) SSA posted a notice in the Federal Register in November that it intends to consolidate the two
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/11/27/2017-25528/consolidating-the-retirement-research-consortium-and-the-disability-research-consortium-into-the
(2) Nothing in the FY2018 appropriations language requires SSA to fund these initiatives
https://www.congress.gov/115/bills/hr1625/BILLS-115hr1625enr.pdf#page=414
(3) In FY2017, SSA spent $7.9 million on the Retirement and Disability Research Consortium (RDRC), out of its $12.5 billion appropriation for the limitation on administrative expenses account
https://www.ssa.gov/budget/FY19Files/2019SSI.pdf#page=37