Differences in Disability Insurance Allowance Rates

Joshua Mitchell and Daniel Thompson

Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies

Abstract: Allowance rates for disability insurance applications vary by race and ethnicity, but it is unclear to what extent these differences are artifacts of other differing socio-economic and health characteristics, or selection issues in SSA’s race and ethnicity data. This paper uses the 2015 American Community Survey linked to 2015-2019 SSA administrative data to investigate DI application allowance rates among non-Hispanic White, non-Hispanic Black, non-Hispanic Asian, non-Hispanic American Indian/Alaska Native, and Hispanic applicants aged 25-65. The analysis uses regression, propensity score matching, and inverse probability weighting to estimate differences in allowance rates among applicants who are similar on observable characteristics. Relative to raw comparisons, differences by race and ethnicity in multivariate analyses are substantially smaller in magnitude and are generally not statistically significant.

Date: 2025-08
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https://www2.census.gov/library/working-papers/2025/adrm/ces/CES-WP-25-54.pdf First version, 2025 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cen:wpaper:25-54

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