Abstract:
|
Like all federal agencies, the Social Security Administration is faced with the challenge of making the best use of administrative and survey data for research and program operations, though limited information exists on how estimates from these two data sources compare on key outcomes, such as employment. This paper uses data from the National Beneficiary Survey that are linked to administrative records on earnings to compare survey and administrative reports of annual earnings for a sample of Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income beneficiaries. We find that both administrative and survey data indicate that less than 20 percent of beneficiaries work during the previous year, though reports of both employment and earnings are higher in administrative data. Our findings indicate that administrative data will identify a much larger sample of beneficiaries who worked in the previous year, which is potentially important for initiatives that target these populations, though both data sources provide potentially plausible estimates for employment outcomes that can be used to depict overall patterns within the population.
|