Supplemental Security Income enrollment and health care and social assistance employment and wages

Abstract

Summary We examine the relationship between disabled working‐age Supplemental Security Income (SSI) enrollment and health care and social assistance employment and wages. County‐level data are gathered from government and other publicly available sources for 3144 US counties (2012 to 2015). Population‐weighted linear regression analyses examine associations between each health care and social assistance employment and wage measure and SSI enrollment, controlling for factors associated with health care and social assistance employment and wages. Results show positive associations between county‐level percent of the population enrolled in the SSI program and health care and social assistance employment and wages with strong associations identified for social assistance employment. A one standard deviation increase in SSI enrollment is associated with a 5.6% increase in the health care and social assistance sector employment percent compared with the mean and 9.7% and 7.3% increases in health care and social assistance sector employment and wage shares, respectively, when compared with the means. We find working‐age adult SSI enrollment is positively associated with employment outcomes, primarily in the social assistance organization subsector and in lower wage paying jobs. Evolving federal disability policy may influence existing and future SSI enrollment, which has implications for health care workforce employment and composition.

Disability, Federal Disability Benefits, and Health Care Access After the Affordable Care Act

“…As such, barriers and outcomes among different classifications of individuals with disabilities still persist in the post-ACA era. Given the size and medical and socioeconomic complexity of this vulnerable population, ongoing monitoring of differences in health care access and utilization for different subgroups of individuals with a disability is important to better understand impacts of continued changes to the health care financing and delivery system (National Disability Navigator Resource Collaborative, 2017; Pellegrini & Geissler, 2018, 2019).…”