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Table 8.Estimated occupational distributions of unemployed SSI recipients, by occupational-choice model aOccupationSSI recipientsNon-SSI recipients with—No disability Any disability Work disabilityTotal 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00Management, professional, and related 10.84 19.70 15.67 15.04Management 1.84 6.28 4.12 4.20Business and financial operations 1.48 2.65 1.82 1.75Computer and mathematical, architecture andengineering, life, physical and social science 0.25 2.79 2.17 1.92Community and social services 1.78 0.88 1.16 1.11Legal 0.37 0.52 0.45 0.47Education, training, and library 2.11 2.44 2.31 2.13Arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media 1.71 1.34 1.26 1.20Health-care practitioner and technical 1.31 2.80 2.38 2.25Service 34.33 22.73 29.21 30.01Health-care support 2.00 3.19 3.71 3.43Protective service 1.39 2.15 2.21 2.19Food preparation and serving related 9.82 8.25 10.23 10.21Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance 14.34 4.96 7.90 8.79Personal care and service 6.79 4.18 5.17 5.39Sales and office 23.51 27.28 24.67 24.34Sales and related 9.62 11.41 10.96 10.71Office and administrative support 13.88 15.87 13.71 13.62Farming, fishing, and forestry 1.00 0.74 0.81 0.75Construction, extraction, maintenance, and repair 4.54 12.15 10.71 10.37Production, transportation, and material moving 25.78 17.40 18.92 19.50Production 11.49 8.94 8.82 8.69Transportation and material moving 14.29 8.47 10.10 10.81SOURCE: Author's calculations using the 2007 American Community Survey.NOTES: The sum of individual categories may not equal the total because of rounding.a. The occupational-choice models are based on separate multinomial logit regressions of occupation for each population group.Covariates in all models include sex, ethnicity, race, marital status, education, age, and age squared. The disabled, work-disabled, andworking-SSI models also include disability type as additional covariates. All estimates use ACS balanced repeated replicate sampleweights. See Table A-3 for the results of the models.panel A). If currently unemployed or non-LFP SSIrecipients were placed in occupations according to theoccupational distribution of currently employed SSIrecipients, the difference between the groups wouldbe minimal. Only about 5 percent of the populationwould need to change occupations for parity (Table 10,panel B).About 16 percent of the population would have tochange occupations for unemployed SSI recipients andnonrecipients without a disability to reach occupationalparity; similarly, 17 percent of non-LFP SSI recipientsand nonrecipients without a disability would haveto change occupations. Surprisingly, the differencesbetween the distributions of unemployed recipients andnonrecipients with any disability or a work-related disabilityare slightly smaller than those between workingrecipients and unemployed recipients.DiscussionThere are several reasons why differences between theoccupational distributions of the groups do not disappearwhen controlling for observable demographiccharacteristics, human capital, and disability type.First, the working-age SSI population is composed oflow-income individuals with a disability defined to besevere and work limiting. It is unlikely that these individualsare physically, cognitively, or mentally capableof all the occupations available to the nondisabled or60 Social Security Bulletin • Vol. 69 • No. 3 • 2009