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

52in their characteristics, levels of impairment, and attitudes toward work. They also may havebeen partly a result of the TTW program itself. At this time, we are reporting just thedifferences without making firm judgments about what caused or influenced them. Ournext report will attempt to identify the causal factors and, in particular, to assess TTW’sinfluence. Nevertheless, the observed differences in outcomes between participants andnonparticipants after Tickets were mailed are at least consistent with the principal objectiveof TTW, and it is hard to imagine that the program could have its intended effects withoutgenerating these sorts of differences.A. TARGET POPULATION AND OUTCOME MEASURESOn January 12, 2002, SSA selected from its beneficiary rolls all individuals in Phase 1states who satisfied the Ticket eligibility criteria. 1 SSA mailed Tickets to these beneficiarieson a staggered schedule beginning in February 2002 and ending in October of that year. 2Beneficiaries who became Ticket eligible after the initial selection date were mailed a Ticketsoon after achieving eligibility but no earlier than if they had been eligible on that date. Weconducted separate program-specific analyses of the 1,511,299 DI beneficiaries and the940,876 SSI beneficiaries who were selected by SSA on January 12, 2002 3 and were still aliveand under age 65 at the end of the analysis period, 15 months after Tickets were mailed. 4These beneficiaries constituted the target population for our analysis. Included among themwere 11,565 DI recipients and 7,757 SSI recipients who had assigned their Tickets.This chapter describes time trends in three key outcomes for DI and SSI beneficiaries:(1) the receipt of zero benefits, (2) the receipt of zero benefits combined with substantial1To be eligible for TTW, a disabled individual must be at least 18 years old and less than 65 years old andreceiving a positive DI or SSI benefit. The disability may be either permanent (improvement is not expected)or nonpermanent (improvement is either expected or cannot be accurately predicted). Two small groups,accounting for about six percent of those satisfying the former criteria, are ineligible: (1) SSI beneficiaries whohad been entitled to benefits under the childhood regulations but who have very recently turned 18 and havenot undergone the process to determine whether they are disabled under the adult eligibility criteria and (2) SSIor DI beneficiaries for whom medical improvement was expected at the time of benefit award but who havenot passed at least one medical continuing disability review.2 Readers who would like more information on the rollout of TTW can consult Thornton et al. 2004,Chapter III.3 We do not present findings for the Phase 1 beneficiaries who became eligible for TTW after January 12,2002 (“newly eligibles”), for three reasons. First, many of them were mailed Tickets after the initial group ofTicket eligibles, so fewer months of postmailing data on outcomes are available for them. Second, newlyeligibles differ dramatically from existing eligibles in the pre-mailing values of the outcome measures, so wewere reluctant to analyze both groups together. Third, there are only about 10 percent as many newly eligiblesas initial eligibles; consequently, the numbers of newly eligible Ticket participants are small (1,131 DI and 844SSI). Thus, summary measures of outcomes would be much less reliable when computed on newly eligibleparticipants than when computed on existing-eligible participants.4 The requirements that beneficiaries be alive and under age 65 at the end of the analysis period ensurethat the trends in outcomes presented in this chapter do not reflect the influence of the attainment of age 65—when many beneficiaries stop receiving disability benefits and begin receiving retirement benefits—or of death.IV: Early Outcomes for Ticket Recipients