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

C HAPTER IIIB ENEFICIARY C HARACTERISTICS ANDE MPLOYMENT P ERSPECTIVESAs part of the TTW evaluation effort, we are conducting the National BeneficiarySurvey for four years beginning in 2004. The first round of the survey wasadministered to a nationally representative sample of approximately 6,500 workingageSSI and DI beneficiaries and to a sample of approximately 1,000 TTW participants whoassigned their Ticket while residing in a Phase 1 state. The survey was fielded from Februarythrough October 2004. 1 This chapter presents some very preliminary findings from thatround of data collection.The preliminary nature of these findings must be emphasized because when theseanalyses were conducted, we had not yet imputed values for missing data, verified the surveyresponses with administrative data, or developed the final sampling weights. While we donot expect the substance of the preliminary findings to change after the final survey data areanalyzed, the specific statistics are likely to be different.The survey questionnaire solicited a variety of information from beneficiaries, includingtheir sociodemographic and health characteristics, their awareness and use of SSA workincentive provisions, their employment experiences, and their income sources and livingarrangements. In discussing our findings in these areas, we focus not only on TTWparticipants and all beneficiaries who were employed at interview but also on how these two,rather small, subgroups of beneficiaries compare to all working age Social Security disabilitybeneficiaries. 2 Findings for the two overlapping subgroups will contribute to ourunderstanding of which and how many beneficiaries work, and the impact of TTW onemployment. In some instances, we also present descriptive statistics for beneficiaries byprogram (SSI-only, DI-only, and concurrent). The statistics presented below are preliminaryand descriptive in nature, intending only to provide a preview of the survey data. In our1 Further information about the design and administration of the National Beneficiary Survey is containedin Appendix C.2 The Phase 1 TTW participants in the survey sample are representative of 0.2 percent of all beneficiaries.Beneficiaries employed at interview represent 8.8 percent of all beneficiaries. See Appendix Table C.6.