Summary
On this examine, we look at the impact of the suspension of in-person providers at Social Safety Administration (SSA) discipline workplaces in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic on functions and the traits of candidates to see if sure teams of beneficiaries have been disproportionately affected. We look at how applicant traits differ by the mode of software—in-person, telephone, or on-line—to know what teams of candidates have been most probably to make use of in-person providers previous to the suspension. We use a difference-in-differences empirical method that permits us to estimate the impression of the suspension of in-person providers on the amount of functions and the demographic composition of candidates whereas controlling for different pandemic-related elements. Our evaluation information consists of software info from SSA’s Structured Information Repository, mixed with applicant work historical past info from the Digital Claims Evaluation sTool. We mixed the executive information with location info of SSA discipline workplaces and county info from the American Neighborhood Survey and the New York Occasions COVID-19 repository.
The paper discovered that:
- There have been systematic variations within the traits of candidates by mode of software. In-person candidates have been older, much less more likely to have accomplished highschool, and fewer more likely to communicate English in comparison with telephone or on-line candidates.
- The suspension triggered a 6-percent lower within the quantity of functions, implying that not everybody who needed to use in-person was in a position to apply utilizing different modes. The impact was bigger for Supplemental Safety Earnings (SSI) functions in comparison with Social Safety Incapacity Insurance coverage (DI) functions.
- The suspension of in-person providers triggered some would-be in-person candidates to use by telephone, but it surely didn’t trigger a rise within the quantity of on-line functions.
- We didn’t discover proof that the suspension disproportionately affected teams of candidates outlined by instructional attainment, age, or English-speaking standing.
- Our estimates indicate that in-person service suspensions clarify greater than 50 % of the decline in SSI and DI functions in the course of the pandemic.
The coverage implications of the findings are:
- Insurance policies that intention to boost consciousness and use of on-line providers may considerably cut back software boundaries to eligible people; nevertheless, they could assist some varieties of eligible people greater than others.
- Understanding the traits of candidates who use the totally different modes of software could possibly be helpful in serving to the federal government effectively allocate sources to assist entry to the applying course of.
- Our outcomes point out that a greater understanding of how software mode impacts the completeness and high quality of SSI or DI functions may in the end result in potential software helps (comparable to entry to a web based chat with an SSA consultant) for modes of software that are usually related to comparatively decrease software high quality.