TY - JOUR AU - Duggan, Mark AU - Kearney, Melissa S AU - Rennane, Stephanie TI - The Supplemental Security Income (SSI) Program JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 21209 PY - 2015 Y2 - May 2015 DO - 10.3386/w21209 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w21209 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w21209.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Mark Duggan Stanford University Department of Economics 579 Serra Mall Stanford, CA 94305-6072 E-Mail: mgduggan@stanford.edu Melissa Schettini Kearney Department of Economics University of Maryland 3105 Tydings Hall College Park, MD 20742 Tel: 301/405-6202 E-Mail: kearney@econ.umd.edu Stephanie L. Rennane RAND Corporation 1200 S Hayes St Arlington, VA 22202 United States Tel: 7034131100 x5442 E-Mail: srennane@rand.org M1 - published as Mark Duggan, Melissa S. Kearney, Stephanie Rennane. "The Supplemental Security Income Program," in Robert A. Moffitt, editor, "Economics of Means-Tested Transfer Programs in the United States, Volume 2" University of Chicago Press (2016) M3 - presented at "Means-Tested Transfer Programs", December 5-6, 2014 AB - The SSI program provides cash assistance to some of the nation’s most vulnerable elderly, blind, and disabled residents. In this paper, we briefly summarize the history of the SSI program and present descriptive evidence on caseload composition and trends. We discuss relevant conceptual issues and empirical evidence focused on four key issues. First, we describe the advantages and disadvantages of categorical eligibility requirements and we show that the SSI caseload has become increasingly comprised of difficult-to-verify conditions, namely pain and mental disabilities. Second, we describe systematic disincentives to accumulate earnings and assets inherent in the SSI program design, but emphasize that the more relevant set of questions for the SSI population are related to the full disability requirement for eligibility. Third, we describe the questions and research about long-term benefits and costs to program participants, in terms of whether the program adequately and appropriately serves the needs of disabled individuals and their family members. And fourth, we present information and evidence about program spillovers, both across programs and across federal and state levels of government. Throughout the paper we make numerous explicit references to areas where further study is warranted and open research questions remain. SSI is an important part of the U.S. safety net, but particular features of the program raise questions about whether there is a more effective way to provide income support for individuals with work-limiting disabilities and families with disabled the children. Our goal for this paper is to systematically present the issues for scholars and policy-makers to consider and explore. ER -