How Do the Disabled Cope While Waiting for SSDI?

Norma Coe, Stephan Lindner, Kendrew Wong and April Yanyuan Wu

Working Papers, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College from Center for Retirement Research

Abstract: The wait time for a Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) award varies from a few months to several years. Little is known about how applicants fund their consumption during this period. Using the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) linked to the Social Security Administration’s 831 file, this study examines the use of seven different coping strategies on which applicants may rely for resources, including government transfers, intra-family resources, other financial resources, and locational changes. Our results suggest that applicants use some coping strategies more frequently with longer application duration, especially spousal employment, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program for the disabled and children. They are also less likely to report receiving Unemployment Insurance benefits, changing their address, and owning a home. Together, these results suggests that some of the studied coping strategies are an important part of funding consumption during the application process, either by sustaining ongoing applications or by making it easier to file an appeal of an initially denied application.

Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2013-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-ias
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://crr.bc.edu/working-papers/how-do-the-disabl ... le-waiting-for-ssdi/ R

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:crr:crrwps:wp2013-12

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College from Center for Retirement Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Amy Grzybowski () and Christopher F Baum ().