Evaluation of the Ticket to Work Program, Implementation ...

We find that both of these groups tend to assign their Tickets at higher rates than otherbeneficiaries. In essence, it seems that working, even at very low levels, is associated withTicket assignment, or stated another way, not working appears to be associated with notassigning a Ticket.1. Individuals with Very Low EarningsThe Ticket Act identified beneficiaries who work at subminimum wages as a group thatmight have a hard time assigning their Tickets. This appears to reflect a sense that ENswould view such beneficiaries as being unlikely to move into the regular labor market andearn enough to leave the rolls and generate TTW payments. Beneficiaries with subminimumwages are likely to be working in sheltered employment and a high proportion of them arelikely to have cognitive disabilities. The administrative data available at this point in theevaluation cannot identify beneficiaries who work at subminimum wages, but those data canbe used to identify beneficiaries with very low earnings. While most subminimum-wageindividuals will be among our group with very low earnings, some of the very low earnerswill not pose the same challenge to ENs as those in sheltered employment, especially thosewith cognitive disabilities. Still, analyzing the experiences of very low wage earners is thebest we can do at this point to roughly approximate the experiences of subminimum wageearners.Specifically, we use data from SSA’s Master Earnings Record, which includes annualearnings information for all workers who pay FICA taxes. These data let us identifybeneficiaries with very low earnings in the year prior to getting their Ticket among thosebeneficiaries who were mailed Tickets by August 2003. 3 For this group, we selectedbeneficiaries with earnings in the bottom quartile of all beneficiaries who had any annualearnings at all in the year before they received Tickets (2001 or 2002). 4 Among beneficiarieswho received Tickets in 2002, only 24 percent had any earnings in the previous year, and thebottom quartile of this subset earned just $995 or less (as shown by the estimates for 2001 inFigure IX.3). Among beneficiaries mailed Tickets by August 2003, only 19 percent had anyprior year earnings, and the bottom quartile of this subset included those who earned$727.50 or less per year. Many among the very low earners in these bottom quartilesprobably earn a subminimum wage, but some may have worked for brief periods at higherwages. Nevertheless, all exhibit a weak attachment to the competitive labor market andwould be seen by many ENs as difficult to serve.1473 In order to be included in our analysis of very low earners, these eligible beneficiaries must have beenmailed their first Tickets before the end of December 2003. We applied this restriction because annualearnings data were only available through 2002 so we do not have earnings data for the pre-enrolled year forthose beneficiaries who received their Tickets in 2004.4 For this analysis, SSA indicated whether each beneficiary was in the bottom quartile of earnings, andproduced a table of the percentage of beneficiaries with annual earnings in categories of $1,000 (for FigureIX.3). Consistent with SSA and IRS policy, MPR did not access individual-level earnings data.IX: Adequacy of Incentives