Publications on Supplemental Security Income

This paper analyzes how mental health problems impede low-income mothers' ability to work and how health insurance improves access to mental health treatment services. According to data from the 2002 National Survey of America's Families, low-income mothers in poor mental health are significantly less likely to work and to work full time than those without these problems. Low-income mothers with public or private health insurance are significantly more likely to receive treatment than those without insurance. Mental health problems are an important barrier to work among low-income women, and access to treatment could be improved through increased health insurance coverage.

Unlike most analyses of Social Security reforms, this paper explicitly considers interactions with the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. Using a microsimulation model, we examine reducing Social Security benefits by the percentage required to approach 75-year solvency. We then add options for attenuating the effects on low-income beneficiaries. In the simulated reforms, we compare benefit receipt patterns, poverty rates, and winners and losers in 2022. Substantial reforms are necessary for SSI to play a more effective income security role. Among the limited set of reforms we consider, Social Security minimum benefit plans would more effectively reduce poverty among low-income beneficiaries.

In this commentary for The Providence Journal, Sheila Zedlewski, director of the Urban Institute's Income and Benefits Policy Center, and Pamela Loprest, a principal research associate, look at how low-income families have fared since the 1996 welfare reform and what needs to be done to keep them from falling through the safety net.

This paper presents trends over time in the number of children in particularly vulnerable families, including families facing risks such as domestic violence, child maltreatment, substance abuse, depression, and childhood disabilities. These families are of particular importance to policymakers given the considerable risk to children's safety and development, the challenges to parents' ability to support a family as well as raise children when they are facing these major stressors, and the potential requirement for strong public or community roles to meet children's needs when parents cannot.

The most vulnerable populations in New Orleans--the elderly, people with physical and mental disabilities, and single mothers out of the labor market--arguably were hit hardest by Katrina. These groups had the highest poverty rates and the fewest assets. Most were African American. Many depended on the social safety net for survival and on others to avoid the storm's catastrophic effects. Rebuilding presents New Orleans with a unique opportunity to strengthen its safety net for vulnerable populations that return and for others who will require help in the future.