Research and Analysis - By Date

Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 65 No. 2

Includes articles on:

• Changes in the Demographic and Economic Characteristics of SSI and DI Beneficiaries Between 1984 and 1999
• SSI Recipients in Households and Families with Multiple Recipients: Prevalence and Poverty Outcomes
• Demographic and Economic Characteristics of Children in Families Receiving Social Security
• Annual Wage Trends for Supplemental Security Income Recipients
• Choice and Other Determinants of Employee Contributions to Defined Contribution Plans
• Introduction and Overview from—2004 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal OASDI Trust Funds
• Executive Summary from—Technical Panel on Assummptions and Methods (2003); Report to the Social Security Advisory Board
• Use of Social Security Administration Data for Research Purposes
• The RAND HRS Data File: A User-Friendly Version of the Health and Retirement Study

How Many SSI Recipients Live with Other Recipients?

The Office of Policy recently completed an analysis of the prevalence of multi-recipient households in the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. The study was based on Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) data for December 1998 matched to administrative records from the Social Security Administration (SSA).

Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 65 No. 1

Includes articles on:

• Evaluating the Initial Impact of Eliminating the Retirement Earnings Test
• Comparing Replacement Rates Under Private and Federal Retirement Systems
• Stochastic Models of the Social Security Trust Funds
• Lifetime Distributional Effects of Social Security Retirement Benefits
• Executive Summary from—Survey Estimates of Wealth: A Comparative Analysis and Review of the Survey of Income and Program Participation
• Outcome Indicators

Child Support Payments and the SSI Program

In determining the benefit amount for a child, the Supplemental Security Income program excludes one-third of child support payments from countable income. Legislation reauthorizing the 1996 welfare reform law contains provisions that would encourage states to allow children receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) to keep more of the child support paid by an absent parent. These potential changes provide impetus to revisit the way the SSI program treats child support.

The Distributional Consequences of a "No-Action" Scenario

The 2001 report of the Social Security trustees projected that the combined trust funds for the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance programs will be exhausted in 2038. This analysis explains the effects of insolvency on future retirement benefits and poverty rates of beneficiaries if no action is taken to strengthen Social Security.

Treatment of Married Couples in the SSI Program

The Supplemental Security Income program serves as an income source of last resort for elderly or disabled individuals. This analysis identifies how marital status affects benefit rates and the counting of income and resources in determining eligibility.

Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 64 No. 4

Includes articles on:

• Racial and Ethnic Differences in Wealth and Asset Choices
• Social Security Reform in Central and Eastern Europe: Variations on a Latin American Theme
• Results of the Office of Policy's 2001 User Satisfaction Survey
• Does Retirement Education Teach People to Save Pension Distributions?
• Recent Changes to the Chilean System of Individual Accounts

Historical Redistribution Under the Social Security Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Program ^*

This study uses Social Security administrative data on past earnings and benefits by year, age, sex, and race to analyze historical redistribution under the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance program across and within cohorts born through the year 1922. The results generally support the findings of closely related previous research, confirming that early cohorts have received large accumulated net transfers to date, that females, as a group, have experienced substantially higher accumulated benefit/tax ratios and internal rates of return than their male counterparts in these cohorts, and that the "Other Races" group fared better by these measures than the "White" race group in most of the cohorts considered. Differences by race in the accumulated benefit/tax ratios estimated in this analysis are sensitive to the choice of the interest rate series and cohort grouping, however, and differ sharply between males and females under some of the interest rate assumptions.

Stochastic Models of the Social Security Trust Funds

Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 64 No. 3

Includes articles on:

• The Upper Part of the Earnings Distribution in the United States: How Has It Changed?
• Trends in the Economic Status of the Elderly, 1976-2000
• Income Growth and Future Poverty Rates of the Aged
• SSI Eligibility and Participation Among the Oldest Old: Evidence from the AHEAD
• What Determines 401(k) Participation and Contributions?
• Comparing Beneficiaries of the Medicare Savings Programs with Eligible Nonparticipants

Mortality Differentials by Race ^*

In the 2001 report of the President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security, the commission states that blacks "on average have both lower incomes and shorter life expectancies than other Americans." This paper examines the extent to which the shorter life expectancies of blacks are explained by differences between their average socioeconomic status and that of other Americans.

Estimates in this paper for men aged 25 to 64 show that about half of the difference in risk of death between blacks and all other races was explained by education level--the measure of socioeconomic status employed. At ages 65 to 90, black men were not found to have a significantly higher risk of death than men of all other races.

Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 64 No. 2

Includes articles on:

• Annual Statistical Supplement Updates for 2002
• Social Security's Special Minimum Benefit
• Modeling SSI Financial Eligibility and Simulating the Effect of Policy Options
• The Canada Pension Plan's Experience with Investing Its Portfolio in Equities
• Social Security: A Financial Appraisal for the Median Voter
• Retirement and Wealth
• Pension Sponsorship and Participation: Trends and Policy Issues

Social Security Disability Programs: Assessing the Variation in Allowance Rates ^*

Do Early Retirees Die Early? Evidence from Three Independent Data Sets ^*

In a 2001 working paper, Links Between Early Retirement and Mortality (ORES Working Paper No. 93), the author used corss-sectional Current Population Survey (CPS) matched to longitudinal Social Security administration data and found that men who retire early die soonet than men who wetire at age 65 or older. Estimates of relative mortality risk control for current age, year of birth, education, marital status in 1973, and race, and the sample is restricted to men who have lived to at least age 65.

This paper uses the 1982 New Beneficiary Survey and a 1 percent extract of the Social Security Administration's year 2000 Master Beneficiary Records to test whether the mortality differentials reported in the author's earlier work can be replicated in other independent data sets.

Social Security Benefit Reporting in the Survey of Income and Program Participation and in Social Security Administrative Records ^*

The quality of Social Security benefit reporting in household surveys is important for policy research on the Social Security program and, more generally, for research on the economic well-being of the aged and disabled populations. This is particularly true for the aged among whom receipt of Social Security benefits is nearly universal and reliance on such benefits is considerable. This paper examines the consistency between Social Security benefit amounts for May 1990 as reported in the Survey of Income and Program Participation and given in the Social Security Administration's administrative records for the respondent.

Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 64 No. 1

Includes articles on:

• Transitions from AFDC to SSI before Welfare Reform
• How Policy Variables Influence the Timing of Applications for Social Security Disability Insurance
• The Social Security Administration's Death Master File: The Completeness of Death Reporting at Older Ages
• The U.S. Study of Work Incapacity and Reintegration
• Legislative History of Title VIII of the Social Security Act
• Improving Child Support Enforcement for Children Receiving SSI
• The Widow(er)'s Limit Provision of Social Security

Racial and Ethnic Differences in Wealth Holdings and Portfolio Choices ^*

There are large differences in wealth across racial and ethnic groups, much of which remain unexplained even after controlling for income and demographic factors. This paper studies the issue of whether differences in saving behavior and rates of return on assets are a possible source of the differences in wealth. It uses data from the Health and Retirement Study to examine the differences in various components of aggregate wealth (including nonhousing equity, housing equity, financial assets, and risky assets) and to inspect differences in portfolio choices by race and ethnicity.

Descriptive tabulations of components of aggregate wealth and portfolio choices shown here point to differences between white and minority households in their saving behavior and choice of assets. These findings suggest that some of the large differences in wealth across racial and ethnic groups that remain unexplained even after controlling for income and demographic factors, may be attributable to the smaller participation in financial markets by minority households.

Social Security Administration, Office of Policy: 2001 Customer Satisfaction Survey, Final Report

Follow-up of Former Drug Addict and Alcohol Beneficiaries

Income Growth and Future Poverty Rates of the Aged ^*

This paper estimates effects on elderly poverty rates of a steady growth in incomes for 50 years. It assumes that the poverty threshold continues to be adjusted for inflation but not for increases in real incomes. Simulations with the March 1998 Current Population Survey indicate that if Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefit rules are not changed and if earnings and other incomes grow by 1 percent per year (the growth rate in earnings assumed in the Social Security Trustees' Report intermediate scenario) in an otherwise unchanging population, poverty among the elderly will decrease from 10.5 percent to about 7.7 percent in 2020 and to 4.8 percent in 2047. Those projected poverty rates are quite sensitive to the earnings growth rate assumption and to the assumption that benefits are not further reduced to maintain solvency. The paper quantifies the sensitivity to these assumptions and discusses several other aspects that might affect future poverty rates--changes in other income components like SSI, earnings, and pensions; changes in longevity and marital patterns; and changes in the distribution of earnings.

Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 63 No. 4

Includes articles on:

• Public Pension Reform in Japan
• Lifetime Earnings Patterns, the Distribution of Future Social Security Benefits, and the Impact of Pension Reform
• Retirement Outcomes in the Health and Retirement Study
• Variation of Employee Benefit Costs by Age
• The Erosion of Retiree Health Benefits and Retirement Behavior: Implications for the Disability Insurance Program
• Older Workers' Progression from Private Disability Benefits to Social Security Disability Benefits
• How Raising the Age of Eligibility for Social Security and Medicare Might Affect the Disability Insurance and Medicare Program
• Early Retirees Under Social Security: Health Status and Economic Resources

Links Between Early Retirement and Mortality ^*

In this paper I use the 1973 cross-sectional Current Population Survey (CPS) matched to longitudinal Social Security administrative data (through 1998) to examine the relationship between retirement age and mortality for men who have lived to at least age 65 by 1997 or earlier. Logistic regression results indicate that controlling for current age, year of birth, education, marital status in 1973, and race, men who retire early die sooner than men who retire at age 65 or older. A positive correlation between age of retirement and life expectancy may suggest that retirement age is correlated with health in the 1973 CPS; however, the 1973 CPS data do not provide the ability to test that hypothesis directly.

Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 63 No. 3

Includes articles on:

• A Benefit of One's Own: Older Women's Entitlement to Social Security Retirement
• Earnings Histories of SSI Beneficiaries Working in December 1997
• Medicare Premium Buy-in Programs: Results of SSA Demonstration Projects
• Eligibility for the Medicare Buy-in Programs, Based on a Survey of Income and Program Participation Simulation
• Divorced Women at Retirement: Projections of Economic Well-Being in the Near Future

The Widow(er)'s Limit Provision

The widow(er)'s limit provision of Social Security establishes caps on the benefit amounts of widow(er)s whose deceased spouse filed for early retirement benefits. Currently, 33 percent of Social Security's 8.1 million widow(er) beneficiaries have lower benefits because of that provision. This paper describes the widow(er)'s limit provision and evaluates proposed changes to it. The proposals considered range from the modest (allowing widow(er)s to receive adjustments to the capped amounts by delaying receipt of benefits) to the substantial (abolishing the widow(er)'s limit).

Methods in Modeling Income in the Near Term (MINT I)

This paper summarizes the work completed by SSA, with substantial assistance from the Brookings Institution, RAND, and the Urban Institute, for the Modeling Income in the Near Term (MINT I) model. In most cases, several methods of estimating and projecting demographic characteristics and income were researched and tested; however, this appendix describes only those methods eventually used in the MINT I model.

Military Veterans and Social Security

Military veterans constitute an important subgroup of Social Security beneficiaries. Because veterans are a large subgroup of Social Security beneficiaries and because policymakers have shown a clear interest in their well-being, it is important to understand how veterans and their dependents are currently faring. This note looks at the characteristics and trends in growth of the veteran and Social Security populations.

SSA's Estimates of Administrative Costs Under a Centralized Program of Individual Accounts

Over the past several years, a number of policymakers have proposed creating national individual accounts (IAs) for retirement whose assets would be individually owned and directed among investment options. Some proposals would create an IA program outside Social Security; others would integrate IAs into the Social Security program itself. All IA proposals, however, would entail administrative functions, costs, and considerations. Identifying and recognizing those administrative elements are important steps in assessing the desirability, feasibility, and optimal design of IAs.

This paper summarizes the administrative operation of Social Security today; provides SSA's estimated administrative costs for two hypothetical IA programs (that is, only the costs that SSA could experience, not those that employers, other agencies, and other parties could incur); and highlights major considerations raised by IA administrative costs and choices.

Widows Waiting to Wed? (Re)Marriage and Economic Incentives in Social Security Widow Benefits

In this paper we focus on an age restriction for remarriage in the Social Security system to determine if individuals respond to economic incentives for marriage. Aged widow(er) benefits are paid by the federal government to persons whose deceased spouses worked in Social Security covered employment. A widow(er) is eligible to receive benefits if she or he is at lease age 60. If a widow(er) remarries before age 60, she or he forfeits the benefit and, therefore, faces a marriage penalty. Under current law, there is no penalty if the remarriage occurs at 60 years of age or later. The Social Security rules on remarriage have changed over time. Only since 1979 have widow(er)s been allow to marry at or after age 60 and not face reductions in benefit amounts.

We investigate whether the age-60 remarriage rule affects the timing of marriage and whether the elimination of the marriage penalty in 1979 encouraged widows 60 or older to marry. For this study, we primarily use Vital Statistics data from the National Center for Health Statistics.

Our major findings are as follows. In 1979, there was an increase in the marriage rate of widows 60 or older. This suggests many widows in this age group chose not to marry until the marriage penalty they faced was removed. Also, in the post-1979 period, there was a drop in marriage rates immediately prior to age 60 and an increase after this age. We do not observe this pattern in the period before 1979, and we do not observe it for divorced women, who generally are not subject to the age-60 remarriage rule. These findings suggest that the age-60 remarriage rule affects the timing of marriage and has the most influence on women who are very close to age 60.

Reducing Poverty Among Elderly Women

Although the Social Security program has substantially reduced poverty among older Americans, 17.3 percent of nonmarried elderly women (widowed, divorced, or never married) are living in poverty today. This paper explores several policy options designed to reduce poverty by enhancing Social Security widow(er)'s benefits, Supplemental Security Income benefits, and Social Security's special minimum benefit. Depending on the option, 40 percent to 58 percent of the additional federal spending would be directed to the poor or near poor.

Analysis of Social Security Proposals Intended to Help Women: Preliminary Results

One aspect of the current debate about changing the Social Security program concerns how new rules might affect elderly women, many of whom have low income. This paper examines three possible changes: (1) a reduction in spousal benefits combined with a change in the computation of the survivor benefit, (2) a redefined minimum benefit, and (3) a 5 percent increase in benefits for persons aged 80 or older. The paper assesses the cost, distributional consequences, and antipoverty impact of each option.

Counting the Disabled: Using Survey Self-Reports to Estimate Medical Eligibility for Social Security's Disability Programs

This paper develops an approach for tracking medical eligibility for the Social Security Administration's (SSA's) disability programs on the basis of self-reports from an ongoing survey. Using a structural model of the disability determination process estimated on a sample of applicants, we make out-of-sample predictions of eligibility for nonbeneficiaries in the general population. This work is based on the 1990 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation. We use alternative methods of estimating the number of people who would be found eligible if they applied, considering the effects of sample selection adjustments, sample restrictions, and several methods of estimating eligibility/ineligibility from a set of continuous probabilities. The estimates cover a wide range, suggesting the importance of addressing methodological issues. In terms of classification rates for applicants, our preferred measure outperforms the conventional single variable model based on the "prevented" measure.

Under our preferred estimate, 4.4 million people--2.9 percent of the nonbeneficiary population aged 18-64--would meet SSA's medical criteria for disability. Of that group, about one-third have average earnings above the substantial gainful activity limit. Those we classify as medically eligible are similar to allowed applicants in terms of standard measures of activity limitations.

Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 63 No. 2

Includes articles on:

• The Impact of Repealing the Retirement Earnings Test on Rates of Poverty
• State and Local Pension Plans' Equity Holdings and Returns
• Social Security Privatization in Latin America
• What Stock Market Returns to Expect for the Future?

Earnings of Black and Nonblack Workers Who Died or Became Disabled in 1996 and 1997

Social Security solvency proposals may affect blacks as a group differently than those of other races because of differences in earnings, mortality, and rates of disability. To provide some background for understanding this issue, this note examines the earnings of workers by age and race, comparing those who recently died or became entitled to Social Security disability benefits with those still alive. It does not analyze any specific proposal for changing benefits.

Distribution of Zero-Earnings Years by Gender, Birth Cohort, and Level of Lifetime Earnings

This note uses data from the Modeling Income in the Near Term (MINT) project to estimate the distribution of zero-earnings years by gender, birth cohort, and level of lifetime earnings from 1951 to 1996. The analysis is focused mainly on zero-earnings years that fall within a worker's highest 35 years of earnings, because only these years are used in the calculation of benefits.

Early Retirees Under Social Security: Health Status and Economic Resources

Some proposals to change the Social Security program to ensure long-run solvency would reduce or eliminate benefits to some early retirees. To what extent might those benefit reductions cause hardship for individuals with precarious financial circumstances and whose health appears to limit their ability to offset reductions in Social Security income through increased earnings? Our research is intended to identify the size and characteristics of the population that might be at risk as a consequence of such changes.

The central finding is that over 20 percent of early Social Security retirees have health problems that substantially impair their ability to work. In fact, among those aged 62-64 who are severely impaired, there are as many Old-Age and Survivors Insurance beneficiaries as there are beneficiaries under SSA's two disability programs. The retirement program functions as a substantial, albeit unofficial, disability program for this age group. Moreover, the majority of the most severely impaired early retirees would not qualify for Disability Insurance benefits.

Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 63 No. 1

Includes articles on:

• The Effect of Welfare Reform on SSA's Disability Programs: Design of Policy Evaluation and Early Evidence
• The Net Effects of the Project NetWork Return-to-Work Case Management Experiment on Participant Earnings, Benefit Receipt, and Other Outcomes
• Participation in Voluntary Individual Savings Accounts: An Analysis of IRAs, 401(k)s, and the TSP
• Attrition in the New Beneficiary Survey and Followup, and Its Correlates
• New Beneficiary Data System

Initial Results and Evaluation Design for the SSA Medicare Part B Buy-in Demonstration

Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 62 No. 4

Includes articles on:

• Projecting Retirement Income of Future Retirees with Panel Data: Results from the Modelng Income in the Near Term (MINT) Project
• Identifying the Race or Ethnicity of SSI Recipients
• Collecting Information on Disability in the 2000 Census: An Example of Interagency Cooperation

Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 62 No. 3

Includes articles on:

• Application of Experimental Poverty Measures to the Aged
• Using Data for Couples to Project the Distributional Effects of Changes in Social Security Policy
• Characteristics of Individuals with Integrated Pensions
• Improving Return-to-Work Strategies in the United States Disability Programs, with Analysis of Program Practices in Germany and Sweden
• Who Is "62 Enough"? Identifying Respondents Eligible for Social Security Early Retirement Benefits in the Health and Retirement Study

Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 62 No. 2

Includes articles on:

• The Distributional Effects of Changing the Averaging Period and Minimum Benefit Provisions
• Recent Changes in Earnings Distributions in the United States: Age and Cohort Effects
• The Development of the Project NetWork Administrative Records Database for Policy Evaluation
• Lifetime Redistribution Under the Social Security Program: A Literature Synopsis
• SSI at Its 25th Year
• Minorities and Social Security: An Analysis of Racial and Ethnic Differences in the Current Program
• Linkages with Data from Social Security Administrative Records in the Health and Retirement Study

Model Income in the Near Term--Projections of Retirement Income Through 2020 for the 1931-60 Cohorts

Who Is "62 Enough": Identifying Eligibles for Social Security Early Retirement in the Health and Retirement Study ^*

Either the normal retirement age (NRA) or the earliest eligibility age (EEA) for Social Security retirement benefits would be increased under many proposals for Social Security reform. As a consequence, research interest in who retires at early ages and the potential effects of an increase in the NRA or EEA has grown. This note discusses how well researchers can do using data from the Health and Retirement Study in identifying the pool of respondents who could have received early Social Security retirement benefits.

Near Term Model Development, Part II

Linkages with Data from Social Security Administrative Records in the Health and Retirement Study ^*

The Health and Retirement Study (HRS) is a major longitudinal study designed for scientific and policy researchers for study of the economics, health, and demography of retirement and aging. The primary HRS sponsor is the National Institute of Aging, and the project is being conducted by the Survey Research Center of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. Several agencies, including the Social Security Administration, are supporting the project. This is the second paper describing SSA's data support for the HRS. It describes the data from SSA records that have been released for linking to HRS data, linkage rates resulting from the consent process, and subgroup patterns in linkage rates.

Characteristics of Individuals with Integrated Pensions ^*

Employer pensions that integrate benefits with Social Security have been the focus of relatively little research. Potentially this is an important omission given the current Social Security reform debate. Since changes in Social Security benefit levels and other program characteristics can affect the benefit levels and other features of integrated pension plans, it is important to know who is covered by these plans. This paper uses data from the Health and Retirement Survey to examine the characteristics of individuals who are covered under integrated pension plans by comparing them with people covered by non-integrated plans and those with no pension plan. The results show that individuals who are female, white, non-unionized, or do not have postgraduate education are significantly more likely to be in an integrated employer pension plan.

Policy Evaluation of the Effects of the 1996 Welfare Reform Legislation on SSI Benefits for Disabled Children: First Round Case Study Findings

Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 62 No. 1

Includes articles on:

• Effect on Benefits of Earnings at Ages 65 or Older, 1995
• Industry, Occupation, and Disability Insurance Beneficiary Work Return
• Retirement Income Security in the United Kingdom
• The Galveston Plan and Social Security: A Comparative Analysis of Two Systems

Policy Evaluation of the Effects of the 1996 Welfare Reform Legislation on SSI Benefits for Disabled Children: Second Round Case Study

Policy Evaluations of the Overall Effects of Welfare Reform on SSA Programs

Recent Changes in Earnings Distributions in the United States: Age and Cohort Effects ^*

In this paper, the author uses large Social Security administrative data sets to examine changes in earnings distributions in the United States over the 1980s through the mid-1990s. Because the earnings information contained in these data sets comes directly from the W-2 forms filed by employers, the self-reporting errors and top-coding problems common in other data used for this type of analysis are minimized. Previous research has documented an increase in overall earnings inequality during the 1970s and the 1980s. The author finds that this upward trend in overall earnings inequality continues in the mid-1990s, despite a period of nearly constant or slightly decreased earnings inequality from 1988 through 1992. The data also suggest that between-group earnings inequality, whether dividing the sample into groups by age group or by birth cohort, is increasing. Despite the increase in between-group earnings inequality over the period examined, however, within-group inequality remains by far the largest contributor to overall inequality.

Lifetime Redistribution Under the Social Security Program: A Literature Synopsis ^*

This paper provides a brief overview of the more important studies of lifetime redistribution under the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) and Disability Insurance (DI) programs. Studies are categorized into two types: those that focus on redistribution across successive cohorts of workers or typical members of those cohorts, and those that focus on the distribution of results across characteristics of interest within particular cohorts of workers. A list of related studies is provided at the end for those interested in additional reading.

Effects of the Project NetWork Demonstration Waiver Provisions

Impacts of the Project NetWork Demonstration

Recruiting SSA's Disability Beneficiaries for Return-to-Work

The Accuracy of Survey-Reported Marital Status: Evidence from Survey Records Matched to Social Security Records ^*

Many researchers have concluded that, in surveys, divorced persons often fail to report accurate marital information. In this paper, I revisit this issue using a new source of data--surveys exactly matched to Social Security data. I find that divorced persons frequently misreport their marital status, but there is evidence that the misreporting is unintentional. A discussion of possible improvements in surveys is presented. Implications for the study of differential mortality and the study of poverty among aged women are discussed.

Retirement Income Security in the United Kingdom ^*

This study examines the United Kingdom's retirement income security system from the American perspective. It addresses issues that most concern U.S. analysts: how the United Kingdom has kept its future public pension costs at a manageable level, the extent to which privatization of public pensions has contributed to these savings, the popular appeal of individual pension accounts, and the impact of privatization on retirement income. These issues are best understood in the context of the U.K. pension program's particular institutional structure and policies, two of which--"contracting out" of public pensions and strong reliance on means-tested benefits--have been largely rejected in the evolution of U.S. policy to date.

Particular use is made of recently available data on coverage rates for public and private pension programs over the total working population and administrative records on inactive personal pension accounts.

Projecting Immigrant Earnings: The Significance of Country of Origin ^*

This paper asks whether information about immigrants other than their age, education, and years since migration can be productively used to project their earnings. Although many factors could affect immigrants' earnings, what is most useful for Social Security modeling purposes is relevant information that is readily available on a continuous basis. Country of origin is a good candidate as it is regularly and readily available from several administrative and survey data sources.

In this paper, microdata samples from the 1960-1990 censuses are used to examine the relationship between country of origin and the earnings of immigrants. By following cohorts of immigrants over 10-year intervals, we learn how country of origin affects the initial earnings of immigrants and how the relationship between country of origin and immigrants' earnings changes as immigrants live in the United States. The paper also presents theoretical insights and empirical evidence about the underlying causes of the link between country of origin and immigrants' earnings.

Recent Changes in Earnings Distributions in the United States ^*

In this paper I use large, Social Security administrative data sets to examine changes in earnings distributions in the U.S. over the 1980s and early-1990s. Because the earnings information contained in these data sets comes directly from the W-2 forms filed by employers, the self-reporting errors and top-coding problems common in other data used for this type of analysis are minimized. Previous research has documented an increase in overall earnings inequality during the 1970s and the 1980s. While I too find that overall earnings inequality generally increased during the early- to mid-1980s, I find that this upward trend in earnings inequality might have slowed, or reversed, during the late-1980s and early 1990s. I also find that within-group inequality for various race and gender subgroups of the population generally increased over the period examined, confirming the results of others and extending those findings into the early 1900s. Finally, I find that women's earnings increased relative to men's earnings over the entire period and that the earnings of black males declined relative to the earnings of the other groups examined.

Pension Integration and Social Security Reform ^*

Many employer-provided pension plans explicitly account for Social Security in their benefit formulas--a practice known as integration. Because integrated pensions are directly linked to Social Security, both the incidence and design of explicitly integrated plans are likely to be affected by changes in the current Social Security program. While integration has been mentioned as an important issue in discussions of Social Security reform, researchers have largely ignored the concept of pension integration. This paper provides basic information about pension integration and addresses, in general terms, the relationship between Social Security reform and pension integration.

Historical Redistribution Under the Social Security Disability Insurance Program ^*

This study uses Social Security administrative data on historical taxes and benefits by year, age, gender, and race for an ex post analysis of redistribution under the Disability Insurance program. The relationship between the taxes paid and benefits received to date under the program is described for successive cohorts as a whole and for specific race and gender groups both within cohorts and across time.

Policy Evaluation of the Effect of Legislation Prohibiting the Payment of Disability Benefits to Individuals Whose Disability is Based on Drug Addiction and Alcoholism

The Retirement Prospects of the Baby Boom Generation ^*

This paper examines the financial prospects of the baby boomers in their elderly years. The paper primarily attempts to draw together and summarize results found by other researchers, but a few new estimates are presented. The consensus of the research appears to be the following. Up to this point, the baby boom generation as a whole has a higher economic status than their parents' generation did at the same ages, but this does not hold for some subgroups. When it becomes elderly, the baby boom generation as a whole probably will have a higher economic status than their parents' generation has and will have at those ages, but, again, this may not hold for some subgroups. It is uncertain whether the baby boom generation as a whole will have enough resources in retirement to maintain their preretirement standard of living without increasing their saving or retiring later, but some subgroups will be able to maintain their living standard without changing their behavior.

The Economic Well-Being of Social Security Beneficiaries, with an Emphasis on Divorced Beneficiaries ^*

There are numerous types of benefits paid under the Social Security programs of the United States, with each type of benefit having its own set of eligibility rules and benefit formula. It is likely that there is an association between the type of benefit a person receives and the economic circumstances of the beneficiary. This paper explores that association using records from the Current Population Survey exactly matched to administrative records from the Social Security Administration. Divorced beneficiaries are a particular focus of this paper.

Type of benefit is found to be a strong predictor of economic well-being. Two large groups of beneficiaries, retired-worker and aged married-spouse beneficiaries, are fairly well off. Other types of beneficiaries tend to resemble the overall U.S. population or are decidedly worse off. Divorced-spouse beneficiaries have an unusually high incidence of poverty and of serious health problems. A proposal to increase benefits for these beneficiaries is evaluated. Results indicate that much of the additional government expenditures would be received by those with low income.

A Structural Model of Social Security's Disability Determination Process ^*

We estimate a multistage sequential logit model reflecting the structure of the disability determination process of the Social Security Administration (SSA), as implemented by state Disability Determination Services (DDS) agencies. The model is estimated using household survey information exactly matched to SSA records on disability adjudications from 1989 to 1993. Information on health, activity limitations, demographic traits, and work is taken from the 1990 Survey of Income and Program Participation. We also use information on occupational characteristics from the Directory of Occupational Titles, DDS workload pressure, and local area economic conditions from unpublished SSA sources. Under the program provisions, different criteria dictate the outcomes at different steps of the determination process. We find that without the multistage structural approach, the effects of many of the important health, disability, and vocational factors are not readily discernible. As a result, the split-sample predictions of overall allowance rates from the sequential model performed considerably better than the conventional approach based on a simple allowed/denied logit regression.

Life-Cycle Aspects of Poverty Among Older Women ^*

In this paper we focus on the relationship between a woman's economic status earlier in life and her poverty status in old age. Previous research on the determinants of poverty among aged women has documented the socioeconomic and demographic correlates of the poor and has examined the financial impact of adverse late-life events such as widowhood, deterioration of health, and loss of employment. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Mature Women, we find that most women who experience these types of adverse events in their later years do not become poor and that a large majority of older NLSMW respondents who were poor in 1991-92 were poor earlier in their adult lives. Whether women are impoverished by adverse late-life events depends on their economic resources just prior to the event. But the financial resources available in old age, in turn, depend very much on their long-term economic status throughout much of their adult lives. This article underscores the fact that for most older women these adverse events do not appear to precipitate poverty spells--at least not within the first couple of years--and directs attention at longer-term circumstances that make some women more vulnerable.

Family Unit Incomes of the Elderly and Children, 1994 ^*

The economic status of the elderly and the economic status of children are analyzed using a comprehensive definition of income that takes selected types of noncash income and taxes into account. Estimates are presented for detailed age groups over the entire age range and for socioeconomic classifications within the elderly subgroup and within the subgroup of children. The paper finds that children and the elderly are less well off than the middle age groups. This result is obtained using median incomes and the percentage of the group that has low income, as defined here. When results obtained with the measures presented in this paper are compared with results obtained with more commonly used measures, there are important differences for both the elderly and for children. For both groups, the composition of the low-income population differs in important ways from the composition of the official poverty population.

Social Security and Immigrant Earnings ^*

Immigrant cohorts have varied over time in many ways that have important implications for projecting the contributions immigrants make to the Social Security system. Using immigrant cohorts in the 1970, 1980, and 1990 decennial censuses, we find that immigrant men experience faster earnings growth than native-born men and that there has been a large increase over time in immigrant earnings growth rates. Thus, recent reductions in immigrant entry earnings are significantly compensated for by faster immigrant earnings growth.

Incomes of the Elderly and Nonelderly, 1967-92 ^*

This paper examines the money incomes of the elderly and the nonelderly. The economic status of the elderly is put in perspective by discussing changes in real incomes since 1967 and the income of the elderly relative to the incomes of other age groups. Detailed age groups within both the elderly and nonelderly groups are examined. The paper finds that the economic status of the elderly in 1992 was substantially better than in 1967 but was about the same as in 1984. The real median income of the elderly rose from 1967 to 1989 but fell from 1989 to 1992. The ratio of the income of the elderly to that of the nonelderly was higher in 1992 than in 1967, but the 1992 ratio was below the 1984 ratio. Large increases in mean Social Security benefits were important in the increase in the total income of the elderly since 1967.

The Economics of Retirement: A Nontechnical Guide ^*

This paper provides a nontechnical explanation of the basic ideas that underpin economists' thinking about work and retirement decisions and discusses and elaborates on the basic economic model of retirement. The paper begins with a simple economic model of an individual's work decision, to explain the construction and logic of this model, and to show how the model can be used to make basic predictions about factors that might plausibly affect the timing of retirement. From this starting point--which essentially describes the economic retirement models before the late 1970s--the paper then explains how the model has been extended during the past 2 decades. The increasing sophistication and complexity of the models reflect scientific progress in which new retirement research incorporates the findings of previous efforts, the desire to incorporate more realism into the models, and the availability of improved data. The progress in economic modeling is emphasized as the contributions of various influential studies are reviewed.

A Guide to Social Security Money's Worth Issues ^*

This paper discusses some of the major issues associated with the question of whether workers receive their money's worth from the Social Security program. An effort is made to keep the discussion as nontechnical as possible, with explanations provided for many of the technical terms and concepts found in the money's worth literature. Major assumptions, key analytical methods, and money's worth measures used in the literature are also discussed. Finally, the key findings of money's worth studies are summarized, with some cautions concerning the limitations and appropriate usage of money's worth analyses.

Occupational Experience and Socioeconomic Variations in Mortality ^*

This paper explores the extent to which occupational experience is responsible for the adverse effect of low income and education on mortality. Using Current Population Survey data on education and disability matched to Social Security data on earnings, disability, and mortality, this question is pursued by examining how the estimated effects of income and education are affected once occupational experience is included in the mortality model. The inclusion of various occupational experience variables, as measured in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles and the National Occupational Hazards Survey, has virtually no effect on the estimated effects of income and education on mortality. These findings suggest that the high mortality of low-income and poorly educated persons is not due to characteristics of their employment but to other aspects associated with poverty.