Social Security Bulletin Released

     The Social Security Administration has posted the most recent issue of the Social Security Bulletin, its scholarly publication, which is now in its 83rd year. Here are summaries of two articles from this issue of the Bulletin:

Mixed-Methods Study to Understand Public Use of Social Security's Online Platform by Lila Rabinovich and Francisco Perez-Arce

In this article, the authors use quantitative analysis of survey data and qualitative analysis of personal interviews to examine public awareness and use of online my Social Security accounts. The accounts are the Social Security Administration's platform for providing both general and personalized retirement-preparation information, including benefit estimators, along with other agency services. The authors explore internet literacy and demographic factors that may affect platform access and use. They also review the experiences and reactions reported by individual platform users.

The Alignment Between Self-Reported and Administrative Measures of Disability Program Application and Benefit Receipt in the Health and Retirement Studyby Jody Schimmel Hyde and Amal Harrati

This study examines the differences between self-reported data and administrative records on Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) application and benefit receipt using survey data from the Health and Retirement Study linked to the Social Security Administration's Form 831 records and Disability Analysis File. The authors find that aggregate survey reports of DI and SSI application and benefit receipt are lower than administrative records indicate and that individual-level misreporting is common, although both sources indicate similar incidence patterns.

New Issue Of Social Security Bulletin

     There's a new issue out of the Social Security Bulletin, the agency's scholarly publication, now in its 83rd year. This issue features articles on Public Knowledge About The Social Security Retirement Programs: Differences By Race And Ethnicity and Why Are Women More Pessimistic About Social Security's Future Than Men?

They Don’t Know How Much They Don’t Know

     Americans know so little about Social Security in general and about Social Security disability benefit in particular. According to new research, 24% of Americans don’t realize that there is such a thing as Social Security disability benefits. 7% don’t realize that you need to apply in order to be approved for those benefits. Yes, I have clients who have a hard time understanding that they won’t have a chance at being approved for Social Security disability unless they apply.

Homelessness And Social Security Disability

      The current issue of the Social Security Bulletin, the agency's scholarly publication, includes an article on Social Security Administration Disability Programs and Individuals Facing Homelessness. Below is a graphic from the article. Click on the image to view full size.

Do People Retire Later If They Receive Frequent Mailings Of Social Security Statements?

     From Can Informational Interventions Be Effective Policy Tools? An Initial Assessment of the Social Security Statement by Barbara A. Smith, published in the Social Security Bulletin:

The Social Security Administration employs an informational intervention—mailing Social Security Statements—to inform workers about their potential benefits. I use linear probability models and agency administrative data to analyze the effect of Statement receipt on the age at which workers claim their Social Security retirement benefits. I compare results for individuals who received one or multiple Statement mailings by age 62 with those who received none during the 1975–2007 study period. I find that workers who received multiple Statement mailings were significantly more likely to claim retirement benefits at later ages than were other workers, and that Statement receipt is positively associated with employment at ages 62–70. I also compare the relative effects of an educational outreach (Statement mailings) and a direct policy change (involving the full retirement age) on claiming behavior and find that the magnitudes of the two effects are similar.

Claimants Denied Disability Benefits Don't Go Back To Work; They Just Keep Trying To Get On Disabiltiy Benefits

     From the Social Security Bulletin, the agency's scholarly publication:

This article examines the experiences of Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) applicants aged 51 or older who were initially denied benefits because the disability examiner determined that they could perform either their past work or other work. ... We find that few older DI applicants who were denied benefits on this basis resumed work at a substantial level following denial. More commonly, applicants denied at this stage continued to pursue benefits, often successfully. Nearly two-thirds of initial work capacity-related denials were ultimately allowed DI benefits after appealing the initial decision or reapplying, and our estimates suggest that many of the rest claimed Old-Age and Survivors Insurance benefits before they reached full retirement age.

     Is it just me or does this suggest that it would be fairer to allow more of the disability claims filed by older people? Denying so many of the disability claims filed by older people creates misery and doesn't end up saving much money anyway. It makes work for me and other attorneys but that's certainly not a valid policy objective.
     Also, do you see evidence in this study to support increasing the age categories in the grid regulations? Should 55 or 57 be the new 50? Where is the proof that making this change would be a reasonable thing to do?

WEP Options

     The Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) that reduces Social Security benefits because of the receipt of pensions based upon income not covered under Social Security has been receiving a fair amount of attention lately, perhaps because many of those affected are in red states which are more likely to exclude state employee wages from the F.I.C.A. tax, giving them state pensions instead. The Social Security Bulletin, the agency's scholarly publication, has an article on the WEP and options for replacing it.

Yeah, They Really Are Sick

     The most recent issue of the Social Security Bulletin, the agency's scholarly journal, contains an article by Jeffrey Hemmeter and Paul S. Davies on Infant Mortality Among Supplemental Security Income Applicants. The bottom line is that child SSI applicants die at a fairly high rate compared to other children.

Click on image to view full size

Can You Help?

     Can anyone help me interpret this report from the Social Security Bulletin on variation in Social Security disability participation? I know I'm in trouble when I'm trying to interpret something that starts out with this sort of thing:

The variance relationship is given in equation (7):

Var[ln(part)]=Var[ln(disprev)]+Var[ln(partdis)]+2Cov[ln(disprev),ln(partdis)]

     If I had been interested in this sort of thing maybe I would have gone to grad school in my undergraduate major, political science (which, at least at the graduate level, is a lot sciencier than you might think). There are reasons people go to law school and some of them have to do with figuring out what you don't want to do.
     I think this report shows that persons of Hispanic origin and those who live in households where English isn't spoken at home are less likely to be on Social Security disability (take that, Donald Trump!) but there's a lot more in this report that I'm struggling to interpret.

Exits From The Social Security Disability Rolls

     Lakshmi K. Raut has written a research piece for the Social Security Bulletin, the agency's scholarly publication, on exits from the disability rolls. Judge for yourself but I don't see any policy implications. Here are a few charts from the study (the conversion he's talking about here is conversion to retirement benefits at full retirement age):

Cumulative probability of DI program exit, by reason and duration on the rolls

Cumulative probability of DI program exit because of recovery or death over the first 9 years on the rolls, by age at entitlement

Cumulative probability of DI program exit because of recovery or death over the first 9 years on the rolls, by selected disability type and age at entitlement

For Most People Disability Isn't Something That Happens All At Once

     Jackson Costa has done a study, published in the Social Security Bulletin, on the decline in earnings prior to claims for Disability Insurance Benefits. Below is a chart from the study.

     The study demonstrates something that's obvious at ground level -- for most disabled people, disability isn't something that happens all at once. It comes on over the course of years. 

     This is important because those in Congress and the higher reaches of Social Security tend to visualize disability as mostly associated with trauma but that's wrong. Trauma is actually a relatively minor source of disability. It's illnesses that accumulate and worsen over time. Often it's more than one thing that disables a person. People try hard to fight off disability. Often they wait a considerable period of time after stopping work altogether before filing a claim. People don't like to have to concede that they're disabled.

Working Longer

     From an article in the Social Security Bulletin, the agency's scholarly publication:

A retired worker's Social Security benefit depends in part on the age at which he or she claims benefits. Working longer and claiming benefits later increase the monthly benefit. Information about trends in employment at older ages and the age at which individuals claim Social Security benefits can help policymakers assess the effectiveness of current policies in influencing the timing of retirement and benefit claims. Both the labor force participation rate among older Americans and the age at which they claim Social Security retirement benefits have risen in recent years. For example, from 2000 through 2015, the labor force participation rate among individuals aged 65–69 rose from 30 percent to 37 percent for men and from 19 percent to 28 percent for women. Since 2000, the proportion of fully insured men and women who claim retirement benefits at the earliest eligibility age of 62 has declined substantially.

Of Course This Can't Be Extended Because It Would Put More People On Disability Benefits And That's Always A Bad Thing

     From the Social Security Bulletin, the agency's scholarly periodical publication:

Many homeless individuals with a serious mental illness are potentially eligible for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments, but the nature of their impairment poses obstacles to completing the SSI application process. In this article, we evaluate the Homeless with Schizophrenia Presumptive Disability (HSPD) pilot that tested whether providing support during the application process improves SSI application outcomes—such as increasing the allowance rate and shortening the time to award—in selected communities in California. Importantly, the HSPD pilot included a presumptive disability determination that provided up to 6 months of SSI payments before an award. Relative to the comparison groups chosen in the surrounding geographic areas, in an earlier period, and in the same locations, we found that the pilot intervention led to higher allowance rates at the initial adjudicative level, fewer requests for consultative examinations, and reduced time to award. ...

The allowance rate for the entire treatment group was 94 percent, ranging from 87 percent in Northern California to 97 percent in Los Angeles ...

Outreach To The Homeless Looks Successful, But ...

     The abstract of an article in the most recent issue of the Social Security Bulletin (emphasis added): 

This study uses administrative data to evaluate the outcomes of the disability applications submitted to the Social Security Administration (SSA) through the Benefits Entitlement Services Team (B.E.S.T) Demonstration Project and to determine if the project successfully increased access to Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments and/or Disability Insurance (DI) benefits for individuals experiencing homelessness. B.E.S.T—a unique partnership between the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, SSA, and the California Disability Determination Services—was a collaborative effort to locate homeless adults and assist them in applying for SSI payments and/or DI benefits. B.E.S.T facilitated the completion of SSI and DI applications, including the compilation of all forms and medical evidence needed to submit the completed applications to SSA. The findings show that B.E.S.T contributed to increased access to disability benefits for applicants. Relative to other disability cases, the B.E.S.T cases had high allowance rates and short processing times.

     The thing that concerns me is the degree of selectivity in the B.E.S.T. program. The article indicates that B.E.S.T. applicants had a 90% rate of success! There's no way of achieving that sort of "success" in this or any other population without being incredibly selective. In a law practice setting, I'd call it wildly overselective. Considering the frequency that homeless claimants are "lost to followup", as physicians put it, B.E.S.T. couldn't have just been insisting on gold plated cases. They must have been demanding platinum plated cases.
     This begs the question of what success means when you're trying to help homeless people.

Social Security Bulletin Released

     The August 2013 issue of the Social Security Bulletin, the agency's scholarly publication, has been released

Why Are ALJs Denying More Cases?

     The November 2012 issue of the Social Security Bulletin, the agency's really wonky scholarly publication, has an interesting article (really, it is interesting!)  Factors Affecting Initial Disability Allowance Rates for the Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income Programs: The Role of the Demographic and Diagnostic Composition of Applicants and Local Labor Market Condition by Kalman Rupp.  Rupp finds that the rate of approval of disability claims at the initial level goes down during recessions and that this decline cannot be explained simply by an increase in the number of disability claims. The evidence suggests that in recessions Social Security makes it harder for people to qualify for Social Security disability benefits at the initial level.
     Rupp did not look at decisions at the Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) level. I hope that either he or someone else takes a look at what happens during recessions at the ALJ level. The rate at which Social Security ALJs allow disability claims has plummeted over the last four years or so. Attorneys who represent Social Security disability claimants have been perplexed by this since the common perception has been that, if anything, the cases have gotten stronger as the baby boomers have aged and as it has become harder for claimants to win at the initial level. Attorneys have theorized that the change had something to do with the ALJ selection process, ALJ training or a set of data that Social Security now provides to ALJs showing each one how he or she compares to other ALJs in their office, their region and the nation on productivity and allowance rate. Press reports about an ALJ in West Virginia who was approving almost all of the cases he heard have also been blamed but those reports didn't start until well after the decline in ALJ allowance rate started. Those on the inside have denied that anything has been done that was intended to affect ALJ allowance rates or that should have had such an effect.  Could it be that the explanation for what has happened at the ALJ level lies in the fields of psychology or sociology, that ALJs have collectively and unconsciously reacted to the recession by being harder on disability claimants?

Social Security Bulletin

     Social Security has released the May 2012 issue of the Social Security Bulletin, the agency's scholarly publication.

Social Security Bulletin Released

The May 2011 issue of the Social Security Bulletin, the agency's scholarly journal, is out.

Social Security Bulletin Released

Social Security has released the February 2011 edition of the Social Security Bulletin, the agency's scholarly publication.

Study On Accelerated Medicare Benefits For The Disabled

Social Security has released a new issue of the Social Security Bulletin, the agency's scholarly publication. One article is of particular interest for the long term. Social Security has been doing a demonstration project which has allowed a few people approved for Disability Insurance Benefits by Social Security to go on Medicare immediately without the brutal two year and five month waiting period. This is the first report on that project. Not surprisingly, those few who received early Medicare reported better health care.