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

earnings for a calendar year by the number of zero benefit months in that year. If theresultant value equaled or exceeded SSA’s monthly substantial gainful activity level for thatyear, then we designated the zero benefit months in that year as months of substantialemployment. All other months—those in which benefits were positive and those in whichbenefits were zero but average earnings were below SGA—were designated as monthswithout zero benefits and substantial employment. 8Almost no Phase 1 Ticket recipients received zero benefits and were substantiallyemployed (Figure IV.2). This is not surprising given that SSI, DI, and TTW rules rely on adefinition of disability that is based on the inability to perform substantial employment.Only four-tenths of one percent of both SSI and DI beneficiaries met our criteria for havingzero benefits and substantial employment when Tickets were mailed. The shallow U-shapedtime pattern that we observed for zero benefit status alone is barely perceptible whensubstantial employment is also considered because substantial employment for Ticketrecipients was extremely rare throughout the analysis period. Specifically, before DIbeneficiaries were selected to receive a Ticket, and 12 months before the Tickets weremailed, just 1.4 percent of them were substantially employed and receiving zero benefits.And for SSI beneficiaries, we know from Figure IV.1 that 3.8 percent were in zero benefitstatus at that time; however, only about one in seven of those individuals were substantiallyemployed by our definition. The resultant very low rate of combining zero benefits withsubstantial employment, just one-half of one percent, reflects the especially weakemployment histories of SSI recipients. 9Rates of combining substantial employment with zero benefits edged up almostimperceptibly for both SSI and DI beneficiaries during the six months after Tickets weremailed, by about one-tenth of one percent to about one-half of one percent. This suggeststhat if TTW did affect the rates at which Ticket recipients combined substantial employmentwith zero benefits, the impacts must have been very small. Of course, six months is notmuch time to allow impacts to materialize. Subsequent reports on this evaluation willpresent findings based on longer follow-up periods.8 Future reports on the TTW evaluation will present analyses of a more direct measure of substantialemployment combined with zero benefits—one that does not require the simplifying assumption underlyingthe current measure. The new measure will be based on SSA’s official determination that a (former) disabilitybeneficiary left the rolls due to work.9 There are several reasons why members of the target population who were not substantially employed(by our definition) at some time during the analysis period may not have been receiving disability benefits.First, they may have been ineligible for benefits at that time for reasons unrelated to their own employment,such as the absence of disability or, for SSI, disqualifying levels of income or assets from other familymembers. Second, the measure of earnings that we used to determine substantial employment has knowncoverage gaps. Most notably, many state and local government employees, as well as some long-term Federalgovernment employees, are not covered by Social Security, so their earnings are not included in SSA’s summaryearnings records, which are the source of our earnings measure. Future reports under this evaluation willpresent employment-related findings based on data from SSA’s detailed earnings records, which have fewercoverage gaps than the summary earnings records because they are not restricted to earnings in Social Securitycovered employment. Additionally, some of our future analyses of zero benefit status and substantialemployment will be based on SSA records data on the reason for exit from the benefit rolls.55IV: Early Outcomes for Ticket Recipients