The Impact of the Rise in SSI Enrollment Among Children

The primary goal of Mark Duggan and Melissa Kearney’s research was to estimate the effect of increased child participation in the federal Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program on family outcomes such as child poverty, maternal labor supply, and other variables during the 1990s. The investigators determined that the growth of SSI enrollment over the past 15 years has substantially lowered poverty rates among affected children, but that it had little impact on parental labor supply or child health insurance coverage. Their research was published in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management in the fall of 2007 and received the Vernon Prize as the best paper to appear in that journal in 2007.

Duggan and Kearney investigated demographic and institutional determinants of child SSI participation using data for all households with children from the 1992, 1993, 1996, and 2001 SIPP surveys. The data showed that program enrollment varies substantially by gender, race/ethnicity, family structure, and the generosity of the state’s AFDC/TANF program. They also found that enrollment of a child in SSI leads to an increase in total household unearned income by approximately 22 percent. Additional findings showed that child SSI enrollment leads to a substantial and persistent reduction in the probability that a household lives in poverty. 

Duggan and Kearney are conducting follow-up research in a project with the Social Security Administration to estimate the long-term impact of SSI enrollment on children, which will be titled, “The Long Term Impact of Child SSI Enrollment.”