Who Is Screened Out? Application Costs and the Targeting of Disability Programs

ManasI Deshpande and Yue Li

No 23472, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The application process is critical to the targeting of disability programs because disability, relative to other tags, is difficult to observe and costly to verify. We study the effect of application costs on the targeting of disability programs using the closings of Social Security Administration field offices, which provide assistance with filing disability applications. Using administrative data from the Social Security Administration, we find that field office closings lead to large and persistent reductions in the number of disability recipients and reduce targeting efficiency based on current eligibility standards. The number of disability recipients declines by 13% in surrounding areas, with the largest effects for applicants with moderately severe conditions, low education levels, and low pre-application earnings. Evidence on channels suggests that most of the reduction in applications is attributable to increased congestion at neighboring offices rather than increased travel times or costs of information gathering.

JEL-codes: H2 I3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-06
Note: AG LS PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (53)

Published as Manasi Deshpande & Yue Li, 2019. "Who Is Screened Out? Application Costs and the Targeting of Disability Programs," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, vol 11(4), pages 213-248.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w23472.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Who Is Screened Out? Application Costs and the Targeting of Disability Programs (2019)
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:23472

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w23472

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 ().