Effects Of Reduced Staffing At Social Security

A line out the door of a Social Security field office in Hawaii

     Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) has recently issued a report on the effects of field office hour reduction at the agency. The report shows:

• Many members of the public are unaware of the field office hour cutbacks. People regularly arrive at field offices that have closed for the day. Social Secuirty isn't doing a good job of communicating office hours and non-Social Security websites often contain misinformation on field office hours.
• Field office managers report that reduced hours allow staff to attend training and staff meetings as well as work on their workloads, particularly complex cases.
• Field office managers told OIG that the reduction in office hours did not reduce the number of visitors served. It just compressed them into a shorter time period.
• Public wait times at field offices increased from 14.4 minutes in July 2011 to 30.5 minutes in November 2013. This has led to increasing complaints from the public and lines out the door of some field offices. People sometimes wait in the rain.
• Field office appointment calendars are "usually" booked for the entire 60 day time period that the system allows.
• Overtime allotted to the field offices has declined dramatically. This alone has had the effect of reducing field office staffing by over 4,000 work years per year.
• Average staff on duty to handle 800 number calls declined by 833, 17%, between 2010 and 2013.

Robin Williams 1951-2014

How Much Did This Study Cost?

     From Vocational Factors in the Social Security Disability Determination Process:A Literature Review by David Mann and Jeannette de Richemond of the Mathematica Center for Studying Disability Policy:

At the request of the Social Security Administration (SSA), Mathematica Policy Research conducted a literature review to inform policy discussion about how the disability determination process for the Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income program s incorporates consideration of the vocational factors —that is, age, education, and work experience. Specifically, we sought to identify and evaluate existing literature, reports, and studies that could directly support evidence -based conclusions about the following research question: to what extent do age, education, and work experience affect a person’s ability to perform work he or she has not performed before, independent of all other factors, such as health, impairments and limitations, motivation, or general labor market conditions? This research question, developed in consultation with SSA, is narrow in scope and reflects both statutory language about the vocational factors and how SSA currently incorporates them into the disability determination process. 

Our principal finding is that no rigorous evidence directly supports how the disability determination process currently uses vocational factors or how the disability determination process could change their future use. Although we found extensive documentation of relationships between the vocational factors and the extent to which people actually work or perform work-related activities, the documentation does not distinguish between the effects of the vocational factors on the ability to perform new work and the many other potential causes of the observed relationships. We identified only two articles that contained information tangentially relevant to the research question.

     I have three thoughts on looking at this report:

1. Duh. I could have told you this for free. Lots of people working for Social Security could have told you this for free. It's not like this subject has never come up before.
2. So either the Social Security Administration is looking for some justification for adjusting how it treats age, education and work experience in determining disability or someone is pressuring Social Security to hunt for some justification for doing this. I'll bet the latter.
3. I wonder how much these "Beltway Bandits" charged Social Security for this priceless research. By the way, guess what? Even though their research is spectacularly unhelpful, these researchers recommended additional research! I've never read one of these "Beltway Bandit" reports that didn't contain a self-serving recommendation for more research. I'll bet that the first topic covered when Mathematica trains new researchers is that it is company policy that all reports must include a recommendation for additional research.

Is This Why The Trustees Report Was So Late?

     Did Social Security's right wing opponents manage to get crucial data removed from the Trustees report? I don't know what happened or whether it matters much (how many people actually read the Trustees report?) but something peculiar happened and people are asking questions and getting no answers.

Off Topic But Awesome

Is It Fair?

     Is it fair for Social Security to demand repayment of an overpayment that was the agency's fault? A television station thinks it's not.

Social Security Turns Down Lots Of 100% Disabled Vets

     Below is a chart labeled "Allowance rates for first DI applications filed by veterans after receiving VA disability ratings of 100% or IU during fiscal years 2000–2006, by VA rating and SSA primary diagnosis body system and selected diagnostic categories." This appears in Veterans Who Apply for Social Security Disabled-Worker Benefits After Receiving a Department of Veterans Affairs Rating of “Total Disability” for Service-Connected Impairments: Characteristics and Outcomes by L. Scott Muller, Nancy Early, and Justin Ronca published in the Social Security Bulletin, the agency's research journal. DI refers to Social Security Disability Insurance Benefits. IU refers to Individual Unemployability. Veterans may be approved for 100% VA disability benefits either with or without consideration of IU.
     Overall, Social Security is denying about 31% of disability claims filed by veterans with a 100% VA rating. Social Security approves only 43.5% of these 100% disabled veterans claims at the initial level and 13.8% at reconsideration but 70.8% at the Administrative Law Judge level. Social Security is turning down 25.3% of the claims filed by veterans determined 100% disabled by VA due to traumatic brain injury and 34.8% of those found 100% disabled by VA due to dementia associated with brain trauma.

For Those Who Believe That Illegal Immigrants Will Bankrupt Social Security

     From VICE News:

Unauthorized workers are paying an estimated $13 billion a year in social security taxes and only getting around $1 billion back, according to a senior government statistician.

Stephen Goss, the chief actuary of the Social Security Administration (SSA), told VICE News that an estimated 7 million people are currently working in the US illegally. Of those, he estimates that about 3.1 million are using fake or expired social security numbers, yet also paying automatic payroll taxes. Goss believes that these workers pay an annual net contribution of $12 billion to the Social Security Trust Fund.

The SSA estimates that unauthorized workers have paid a whopping $100 billion into the fund over the past decade. Yet as these people are in the US illegally, it is unlikely that they will be able to benefit from their contributions later in life.

Comparing Disability Benefits In US To Other Countries

     Below is a chart showing average growth rates in disability benefits by decade across several countries from Disability Benefit Growth and Disability Reform inthe US: Lessons from Other OECD Nations by Richard V Burkhauser, Mary C Daly, Duncan McVicarand Roger Wilkins in the IZA Journal of Labor Policy. The authors say that the United States must "reform" its disability benefits policies but the chart seems to me to dramatically undermine their argument.

Want To Save Some Real Money At Social Security?

     Even researchers at Mathematica, Social Security's prime contractor for the Ticket to Work program, could find "no consistent evidence of impacts [of Ticket to Work mailings] on the number of months in which beneficiaries did not receive benefits because of work, or on other outcomes." The researchers try to blame the failure of Ticket to Work on the recession.