The Retirement and Disability Research Consortium (RDRC) was established by the U.S. Social Security Administration in 2018. The CRR receives support under the RDRC to conduct and disseminate research along with its partner organizations: Mathematica – Center for Studying Disability Policy, Syracuse University, the Urban Institute, and the Brookings Institution.
Other organizations funded through the RDRC include:
- Michigan Retirement and Disability Research Center
- NBER Retirement and Disability Research Center
- University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Financial Security
Read more about the Consortium’s evolution and research contributions: Social Security Bulletin 69(4); and Social Security Bulletin 80(1).
Learn more about the Consortium’s funding opportunities.
The Annual Meeting will be held virtually on August 4-5, 2022.
FY2022 projects:
1. “How Will COVID Affect the Completed Fertility Rate?”
by Anqi Chen, Nilufer Gok, and Alicia H. Munnell, Boston College
Fertility rates will likely decline in the wake of the COVID pandemic, much like they did after prior recessions and crises. If COVID-related declines in fertility are temporary and completed fertility remains unchanged, the impact will be minimal for pay-as-you-go programs such as Social Security. However, a more permanent decline – on top of today’s already low levels of fertility – would have important implications for Social Security.
To identify whether any decline is temporary, the project will use a two-pronged approach. First, it will examine declines in births by age in 2020 using an event study with heterogeneous treatment effects, relying on data from the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS), to isolate COVID’s impact. To the extent that the dips occur among women in their mid-30s or older, completed fertility may be lower. Second, the project will examine changes in fertility expectations. For younger women, temporal dips may not be a concern since they have time to catch up. Instead, the impact on these women is the extent to which their expectations themselves change. This project will examine changes in expectations among women in their 20s, pre- and post-pandemic. For context, all results will be compared to the Great Recession.
2. “How Does COVID-Induced Early Retirement Compare to the Great Recession?”
by Anqi Chen, Alicia H. Munnell, and Siyan Lu, Boston College
COVID has been uniquely challenging for older workers. They have not only faced job loss from a weakened economy but have also been particularly vulnerable to the virus itself. During this difficult period, the ability to claim Social Security benefits early provides a potentially important safety net. But claiming early comes at a significant loss in monthly benefits, and – due to relatively large actuarial adjustments – lower lifetime benefits. If early claiming has occurred due to COVID, who are the early claimers? How much has early claiming cost them? And do they differ from early claimers in the Great Recession? Social Security has an interest in identifying early claimers because, to the extent these losses fall on disadvantaged groups, they undermine the system’s progressivity.
The project will first use the Health and Retirement Study to estimate a hazard model to identify who claims early when the economy weakens. The second step involves calculating lifetime benefits foregone and how they differ by income and race/ethnicity. The final step compares claiming and losses during COVID with the Great Recession.
3. “What Are the County-Level Drivers of DI and Early OASI Benefit Claims During COVID?”
by R. Vincent Pohl and David Mann, Mathematica Policy Research and Kai Filion, U.S. Social Security Administration
The COVID pandemic constitutes a health and economic shock that might lead to higher rates of long-term disability and affect applications for disability-related or early retirement benefits. This project will assess how the pandemic and its economic consequences affected DI applications and awards and early retirement claims.
We will construct a county-month-level dataset of: DI application and initial award rates and early retirement claims; COVID cases and related factors, such as deaths and health care use; and employment rates. We will start by documenting changes in DI applications and awards and early retirement claims during the pandemic and how the changes varied across regions. The project will then use geographic differences in infection rates and economic activity to descriptively document the correlation between severity of the pandemic and new DI applications and initial awards and early retirement claims in 2020 and 2021.
This analysis will shed light on an important consequence of the pandemic for Social Security benefits and contribute to a broader understanding of the factors that determine DI take-up and early retirement claims.
4. “Does the Drop in Child SSI Applications and Awards During COVID Vary by Locality?”
by Michael Levere and David Wittenburg, Mathematica Policy Research and Jeffery Hemmeter, U.S. Social Security Administration
This project will assess local-level variation in the decline of child SSI applications and awards during COVID. It will link data from the Supplemental Security Record (SSR) with publicly available sources to explore the correlation between SSI applications and awards and local-level COVID experiences, demographics, and economic characteristics. The results will help SSA identify particularly vulnerable areas that may need post-COVID outreach.
Nationwide, child SSI awards fell by more than 30 percent during COVID (U.S. Social Security Administration 2021a) with a large drop in applications (Emanuel 2021). Based on past research on how office closures impact SSI participation (Deshpande and Li 2019), the closure of all field offices likely affected both applications and awards. Other factors that varied locally – e.g., social, educational, and medical service responses; demographics; reductions in economic activity; and COVID cases and deaths – could also contribute to the decline in applications and awards. It is critical for SSA to understand these patterns in local decline to identify areas with the strongest future need to conduct outreach and encourage equitable program growth.
5. “Does Broadband Access Affect DI Award Rates?”
by Barbara A. Butrica and Jonathan Schwabish, Urban Institute
The proposed project examines the relationship between broadband internet access and DI awards. If data become available, the project will also examine DI applications, the preferred metric. This topic is important to SSA because the share of DI applications filed through the internet has remained relatively flat since 2012 (U.S. Social Security Administration 2021), despite an increase in broadband access and internet use. The reach of Social Security’s DI program may be limited if adults with disabilities are disproportionally represented among the 14 million Americans without broadband access.
6. “How Might Workers Respond If Social Security’s Revenue Base Were Broadened?”
by Melissa Favreault, Karen Smith, and Richard Johnson, Urban Institute
This project will use restricted IRS statistics of Income (SOI) data to analyze the amount and distribution of workers’ compensation that is excluded from the Social Security contribution base. It will describe the characteristics of workers with excluded compensation and estimate how much additional Social Security tax revenue could be collected under alternate treatment of excluded income. The longitudinal feature of the data will enable us to estimate potential behavioral responses to any changes in the Social Security wage cap, payroll tax rate, or taxability of excluded compensation.
7. “How Do Racial Disparities in Lifetime Earnings Shape Social Security and SSI Benefits?”
by Melissa Favreault, Urban Institute and Tokunbo Oluwole, Gayle L. Reznik, and Christopher R. Tamborini, U.S. Social Security Administration
This project will use pooled data from the Current Population Survey matched to administrative records on earnings, program participation, immigration status, and mortality to examine how earnings differences affect future Social Security benefits. We will document long-range earnings disparities by race, Hispanic origin, nativity, sex, and education simultaneously and show how long-range earnings inequities affect key Social Security policy parameters. Our estimates can help improve SSA and Urban Institute distributional projections of OASDI and SSI proposals, thus bolstering capacity for racial equity scoring.
8. “What Is the Risk to OASI Benefits from Unpaid Student Loans?”
by Gal Wettstein and Siyan Lu, Boston College
This project will use the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) to examine the extent to which OASI benefits are at risk of being garnished due to delinquent student debt. SSA has an interest in this question because rising student loan delinquency, particularly among older adults, may threaten the economic security of OASI beneficiaries.
Student debt has been rising over the past few decades, including among older adults. While the magnitude of student debt held by those over 65 is not large, both the share holding such debt and the mean amount of debt have risen rapidly since 1990, with the pace of growth faster for Black borrowers than for whites. Defaults on student loans have similarly been rising among older debt holders, particularly for loans for education at Minority Serving Institutions. Education loans are unusual in that they cannot be discharged through bankruptcy. Relatedly, federal payments, including OASI benefits, can be withheld by Treasury to pay for delinquent loans. This project will estimate how much student debt is held by OASI beneficiaries, and how much of their benefits are at risk of being withheld due to loan delinquency.
9. “How Do Cost-of-Living Differences Affect Retirement for Low and Moderate Earners?”
by Gal Wettstein and Laura D. Quinby, Boston College
This proposal will use the Health and Retirement Study to analyze how differences in local costs of living affect three retirement decisions – how much to save, when to claim, and whether to move after retiring – with a focus on low-skilled workers. SSA has an interest in knowing the extent to which benefits can support retirement – particularly for low-skilled workers – in expensive locations.
U.S. cities have large and growing differences in the cost of living, where housing costs in coastal metropolitan areas are multiple times the national average. Labor and housing markets have adjusted so that housing prices have moved with wages, with high-cost areas offering higher wages to compensate workers. However, workers in high-cost, high-wage areas see lower replacement rates in their OASI benefits relative to similar workers in low-cost, low-wage areas, due to the program’s progressive formula. As a result, these same workers in the high-cost area may be less prepared for retirement and may need to work longer, save more, or move to a cheaper destination once they stop working.
10. “How Has COVID Affected Household Balance Sheets?”
by Andrew G. Biggs, American Enterprise Institute and Anqi Chen and Alicia H. Munnell, Boston College
In 2019, about 40 percent of households said they would have trouble paying for a $400 unexpected expense. This percentage would have likely increased during the COVID pandemic if not for the stimulus checks. When households are operating under such tight budgets, saving for long-term goals such as retirement can be challenging. SSA has an interest in households’ ability to save and their reliance on Social Security.
During the pandemic, most households received stimulus checks totaling several thousand dollars, regardless of employment status. For those who lost their jobs, the payments likely went to cover basic expenses. But for those who remained employed, the money could have provided precautionary savings. Full information about the longer-term impact of the stimulus payments on household balance sheets will not be available until the 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) is released. This project aims to provide an early assessment of what those 2022 numbers might look like using all available evidence, including the Household Pulse Survey, Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking, Panel Study of Income Dynamics, and Consumer Expenditure Survey.
11. “How Have COVID Experiences Varied by Race Among Older Adults with Disabilities?”
by Amal Harrati and Marisa Shenk, Mathematica Policy Research
This project will study disparities in the experiences of older adults during the COVID pandemic using data from the COVID module of the 2020 Health and Retirement Study. The research will inform SSA’s understanding of the disproportionality of negative COVID outcomes among vulnerable populations, the intersectionality of disability with race and ethnicity among Americans over age 50, and opportunities for targeting supports to underserved communities most impacted by COVID.
The pandemic has highlighted vulnerabilities in both economic security and physical health among older adults, people with disabilities, and people of color. We will explore the effects of the intersectionality of these identities, as well as examine the ways in which they are influenced by the structural forces that both contribute to and exacerbate these inequalities.
The HRS fielded a COVID module with a representative sample of older adults that includes information on self-reported effects of COVID on work, finances, and physical health, including COVID diagnoses and receipt of health care.
12. “What Factors Drive Racial Disparities in Housing Wealth Accumulation?”
by Laura D. Quinby and Siyan Liu, Boston College
For most households, their home is the largest source of wealth at retirement, and homeownership provides a key tool for households to build wealth. However, a long history of discrimination in the housing market has constrained the ability of Black households to accumulate housing wealth. The two reasons limiting Black housing wealth are that Black households are less likely to own houses and, when they do, they see lower wealth accumulation compared to similar white homeowners. This study will focus on the second reason and will quantify the extent to which disparities in the housing market limit the ability of Black homeowners to accumulate housing wealth for retirement. SSA has an interest in this question because an inability for Black households to accumulate wealth makes them more dependent on Social Security benefits when they retire.
This study will use the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the Survey of Consumer Finances to estimate the extent to which three factors – not receiving parental assistance with down payments, slower appreciation, and higher mortgage interest rates – contribute to the housing wealth gap at retirement.
13. “How Do Health and Marital Shocks Affect Disparities at Older Ages?”
by Richard Johnson and Melissa Favreault, Urban Institute
This project will use Health and Retirement Study data, including exit interviews and links to administrative earnings records, to measure the incidence of health and marital shocks after age 70, assess their impact on household wealth, and compare outcomes by race/ethnicity and other characteristics. SSA has an interest in identifying those factors, especially the need for long-term services and supports (LTSS), that contribute to economic hardship at older ages and understanding disparities by race/ethnicity.
The analysis will measure how LTSS needs, chronic health conditions, health care and LTSS use, widowhood, and divorce affect the level of and changes in household wealth and the probability that older adults have depleted their household wealth at the time of death. Although past studies have documented the deleterious effect of later-life health shocks, no consensus has emerged on how often LTSS needs cause older adults to exhaust their savings and how that risk varies by lifetime earnings and by race/ethnicity.
14. “Is the Scarring from Unemployment Worse for Black Workers?”
by Laura D. Quinby and Gal Wettstein, Boston College and Glenn Springstead, U.S. Social Security Administration
This project will use the Continuous Work History Sample (CWHS) and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to examine whether unemployment’s “scarring” of future earnings affects Black workers more than otherwise similar white workers. SSA has an interest in this question as Black workers experience more frequent and longer unemployment spells than white workers, a trend recently exacerbated by the COVID pandemic.
While it is well known that job loss hurts the long-run earnings of displaced workers, recent research does not emphasize how the effect might vary by race. Displaced Black workers may have a harder time recovering earnings than similar white workers because of discrimination in hiring. However, a simple analysis could miss this dynamic because – due to continuing differences in education and employment opportunities – Black workers are less likely to hold the type of “career ladder” jobs that offer large wage premiums, and therefore have less to lose. This study will use regression analysis to consider how job loss affects the subsequent earnings of Black and white workers who are similar along many dimensions, including education and prior earnings.
15. “How Has BOND Affected Work Outcomes by Race?”
by Amal Harrati and Denise Hoffman, Mathematica Policy Research and John Jones, U.S. Social Security Administration
We propose to re-examine impacts from the Benefit Offset National Demonstration (BOND) to explore racial differences in outcomes. Specifically, we will examine: 1) whether racial differences in program impact exist; and 2) the extent to which differences can be traced to community-level racial inequities in economic conditions. This research can highlight structural forces that contribute to racial disparities in return to work and inform future SSA efforts to tailor program implementation to help alleviate these disparities.
Racial inequalities in local labor market conditions and opportunities may have limited the reach of the BOND intervention for some or all participants. This analysis will identify characteristics of participants’ communities that may hinder employment opportunities by race. We will pair data from the BOND impact analysis with four well-validated measures of racial inequalities in employment and economic conditions for participants’ county of residence.
16. “How Will COVID Affect the Mortality of Older Adults?”
by Gal Wettstein, Anqi Chen, and Alicia H. Munnell, Boston College
This project uses data from the American Community Survey, the Health and Retirement Study, and the National Vital Statistics System to approximate the medium-term mortality rate of the post-COVID population of older adults in the United States. SSA has an interest in knowing how the pandemic will affect mortality rates to estimate program liabilities and trust fund depletion in the near term, and to separate the effect of COVID from general trends in mortality for long-term actuarial projections.
COVID has caused the deaths of many older adults, which reduces total Social Security spending, all else equal. But the victims are disproportionately older, sicker, and from racial and ethnic minorities – groups with generally high mortality rates. Thus, mortality experience over the next few years will likely be lower than it would have been absent COVID. This project will account for the demographic and health characteristics of the COVID victims to estimate mortality rates among older adults, after the acute phase of the pandemic.
17. “How Has the Evolving Nature of Work Affected Health and Disability?”
by Stipica Mudrazija and Barbara A. Butrica, Urban Institute
The nature of work and job-related health requirements has changed dramatically over time, largely due to the shift from goods-producing jobs to service jobs as well as technological change and automation. As the nature of work has evolved, so have job-related health requirements. What is less understood is whether the evolving nature of work has also impacted the relationship between health and work-related disability and disability applications.
Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, supplemented with data on job demands from the Occupational Requirement Survey and Occupational Information Network, this project will document trends in the association of health and functioning with the risk of experiencing a work-limiting health event and applying for disability benefits. It will also assess whether the changing composition of jobs and job demands impacted the strength of the relationship between health status and the two outcomes of interest.
FY2021 projects:
1. “What Are Pathways to Overpayments”
by Denise Hoffman and Michael Anderson, Mathematica Policy Research and John Jones, Social Security Administration
This project will study the experiences of the 2008 cohort of first-time DI beneficiaries who were at risk for work-related overpayments from award through 2018 using data from SSA’s Disabled Beneficiaries and Dependents files, Disability Analysis File, and Master Earnings File. The results will inform SSA’s understanding of the trajectories that lead beneficiaries to overpayments, which could identify mitigation strategies.
To date, limited information is available on work-related overpayments, such as the total amount and duration of overpayments and the average characteristics of overpaid beneficiaries. Previous research documents that more than 70 percent of beneficiaries at risk of a work-related overpayment were overpaid in a three-year window (Hoffman et al. 2019). However, experiences and trajectories presumably vary across beneficiaries and understanding common pathways may help identify points of intervention that could prevent overpayments.
2. “What Happens Following DI Termination?”
by Michael Anderson and Denise Hoffman, Mathematica Policy Research and Kai Filion, Social Security Administration
This project will use data from SSA’s Disability Analysis File and Master Earnings File to document trends in labor market outcomes and return to DI or SSI following termination of DI benefits. The results will be useful to SSA in: 1) informing potential interventions to promote self-sufficiency and reduce return to disability benefit entitlement; and 2) anticipating potential outcomes of proposed legislative changes.
Prior research suggests that beneficiaries terminated for medical improvement have limited earnings following termination and may return to SSA disability programs. However, that research focused on benefit terminations through 2008 and did not include termination for employment. We will add to the existing literature by identifying DI beneficiaries whose benefits were terminated for medical improvement or employment in 2001-2018 and track the outcomes of those terminated by 2013 in the first 5 years following termination. The years after 2008 are of special interest because of the recovery following the Great Recession and because of changes in the composition of the DI caseload since that time.
3. “Comparative Regression Discontinuity and Regression Discontinuity as Alternatives to Randomized Control Trials: Evidence from BOND”
by Duncan Chaplin and Denise Hoffman, Mathematica Policy Research and John Jones, U.S. Social Security Administration
This project will use data from the evaluation of the Benefit Offset National Demonstration (BOND) to assess the efficacy of comparative regression discontinuity (CRD) and regression discontinuity (RD) relative to each other and to randomized controlled trials (RCTs). RD is known as a relatively rigorous non-experimental method but produces imprecise results that apply to small populations. CRD addresses these issues. The findings will support interpreting CRD and RD studies on DI and related programs. They might also help SSA decide whether to consider these methods for testing impacts of proposed rules, using criteria such as duration of benefit receipt and beneficiary age to define those eligible and ineligible for the new rules. The CRD and RD methods are potentially attractive because they can avoid many of the challenges and costs of an RCT, but only if their validity is high.
We will estimate CRD and RD models using simulated assignment to the BOND treatment group based on cut-points on duration of benefit receipt at the start of the BOND program. We will compare those estimates to each other and to RCT estimates for the treated group, for CRD, and to RCT estimates for those near to the cut-point, for RD.
4. “Examining Mortality and Receipt of Benefits Administered by SSA as Reasons for Desistance from Homelessness among Older Adults”
by Matthew S. Rutledge, Boston College, Dennis Culhane, University of Pennsylvania, and Thomas Byrne, Boston University
The study links data from the emergency shelter systems in several large American cities with SSA data to investigate the pattern of desistance from homelessness among those in the age cohort who have been disproportionately impacted by homelessness for over 20 years and who are now approaching retirement age. The specific research questions to be addressed by the study are as follows: 1) To what extent does mortality contribute to the observed pattern of desistance from homelessness among older adults?; 2) How does premature death impact the ability of persons with a history of homelessness to receive Social Security retirement benefits? To what extent do individuals with earnings histories that would render them eligible for Social Security retirement benefits die prior to reaching the statutory age for claiming these benefits?; and 3) To what extent do older homeless adults receive Social Security retirement benefits, SSDI and SSI? Does receipt of these benefits help facilitate exits from homelessness?
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