The Social Security Student Benefit Program and Family Decisions

Ronald Ehrenberg and Rebecca A. Luzadis

No 1357, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: In 1965 Congress established the Social Security Student Benefit Program which provided benefits for children of deceased, disabled or retired workers,who were enrolled in college full-time and were not married, up until thesemester they turned age 22. The program grew to be a major financial aid program; at its peak in FY 81 it represented about 20% of all federal outlays on student assistance for higher education. The program was terminated for students newly entering college as of May 1, 1982. Somewhat surprisingly, in contrast to the debate that accompanies most social programs, debate over the student benefit program focused on its costs and almost totally ignored the possible effects of the program. Virtually nothing is known about how the program influenced potential recipients decisions to attend college, the quality of the education they received, the amount that recipients' families contributed to the student's education, or recipients' in-school and summer employment.This paper seeks to shed insights into some of these effects, using data from the Social Security Administration's 1973 Survey of Student Beneficiaries the only national survey of participants in the program.

Date: 1984-05
Note: LS
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published as Ehrenberg, Ronald G. and Rebecca A. Luzadis. "The Social Security Student Benefit Program and Family Decisions," Economics of Education Review, Vol. 5 , No. 2, pp. 119-128, April 1986.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w1357.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The social security student benefit program and family decisions (1986)
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:nbr:nberwo:1357

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w1357

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by (wpc@nber.org).