From Does Welfare Prevent Crime? The Criminal Justice Outcomes of Youth Removed From SSI by Manasi Deshpande & Michael G. Mueller-Smith (emphasis added):
We estimate the effect of losing Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits at age 18 on criminal justice and employment outcomes over the next two decades. ... We find that SSI removal increases the number of criminal charges by a statistically significant 20% over the next two decades. The increase in charges is concentrated in offenses for which income generation is a primary motivation (60% increase), especially theft, burglary, fraud/forgery, and prostitution. The effect of SSI removal on criminal justice involvement persists more than two decades later, even as the effect of removal on contemporaneous SSI receipt diminishes. In response to SSI removal, youth are twice as likely to be charged with an illicit income-generating offense than they are to maintain steady employment at $15,000/year in the labor market. As a result of these charges, the annual likelihood of incarceration increases by a statistically significant 60% in the two decades following SSI removal. The costs to taxpayers of enforcement and incarceration from SSI removal are so high that they nearly eliminate the savings to taxpayers from reduced SSI benefits.
You've been granted SSI disability benefits as a child. It wasn't easy. You had to have been pretty sick. However, at age 18, even though you haven't gotten a bit better, you're made to prove all over again that you're disabled and in many, many cases cut off your SSI, leaving you with no income. Why? Does turning 18 make people healthier? How can we realistically expect anything other than bad results from such a brutal policy? This study is looking at just the dollar costs to the government. What about all the misery caused to disabled people and their families? That has value too.
10 comments:
Ohhh I dont know, maybe because going to school and needing a IEP is TOTALLY different than being able to go to work every day. Not everyone needs college to make a good living and you can have childhood disorders that qualify for SSI that dont stop you from working. Those that have legitimate physical or emotional/behavioral continue to qualify.
So...we need to continue paying these people SSI to not commit crimes? Right. Welcome to bizarro world.
You do know adult criteria are different from child criteria, right? It's not intended necessarily to be cruel. It would take a lot of rewriting by congress to change this.
The childhood criteria are different than the adult criteria: the former are more onerous. The impairment(s) must meet or medically equal a listing in the Listing of Impairments, or functionally equal the listings. To functionally equal the listings, an impairment(s) must be of listing-level severity; that is, it must result in “marked” limitations in two domains of functioning or an “extreme” limitation in one domain.
Before a continuing disability review can result in cessation of benefits, medical improvement must be established. This is tough to establish.
It is a lot harder to establish that disability is newly met at age 18 than it is to show that there has been no medical improvement once disability has been established.
But medical improvement is not a requirement at age 18.
So lots of children's benefits cease at age 18.
This is by design of the Gingrich Congress in 1995-1996 (although they wanted to do even worse).
This study speaks more to the economic or socioeconomic circumstances surrounding those on SSI than it does to the SSI cessation. The paper itself only speaks to ceasing benefits rather than any reasons for a cessation.
A number of conditions that result in childhood awards are expected to improve over time (low birth weight allowances, ADHD allowances, speech impairment allowances, etc.). There are some that can improve with treatment or therapy to the point where the child improves their physical or mental function to be successful students or workers. And there are a number of conditions that will, unfortunately, never improve. To suggest that childhood SSI recipients haven’t or won’t get better shows a real ignorance about the conditions and a lack of familiarity with childhood cases.
@9:45
Paying people not to commit crimes sounds like a great idea.
@9:27
Medical improvement is not a requirement for age=18 cessation.
It is not inconsistent to cease children on SSI at age 18 -- adult disability criteria are predicated on inability to sustain SGA, where child disability criteria are predicated on ability/inability to function at age level. Two different sets of criteria.
@10:10, I didn’t say medical improvement was a factor. But read the title of the post. It’s ridiculous to suggest that children with disabling conditions don’t get or aren’t getting better with time.
@1:25 The NBER article doesn't seem to care if these people are disabled or not, it is just examining what societal costs are associated with stopping SSI benefits at age 18.
Who is suggesting "that childhood SSI recipients haven’t or won’t get better"?
Our host's comments on the article seems to be addressing children who "haven't gotten a bit better" but who lose benefits at age 18, which can surely happen.
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