Using the Survey of Income and Program Participation in Disability Research and Policy¹

Issue title: The Future of the Survey of Income and Program Participation

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Laplante, Mitchell P.^a

Affiliations: [a] Institute for Health & Aging, School of Nursing, University of California, 201 Filbert Street, Suite 500, San Francisco, CA 94133-3203, USA

Note: [1] This work was commissioned by the Committee on National Statistics (CNSTAT) of the National Research Council and was supported in part by a grant from the U.S. National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research. Any opinions and conclusions expressed should not be construed as representing the opinions or policy of the sponsoring institutions. The author wishes to thank Constance Citro of CNSTAT and the participants at the Conference on the Future of SIPP for their helpful comments.

Abstract: The Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) has been used to provide descriptive estimates of the health and disability status of the U.S. population. Comparisons are drawn between SIPP estimates and independent estimates of disability including data from Canada and Britain which shows evidence of the reliability and weaknesses of certain measurements. SIPP is found to substantially underestimate participation in special education programs and fails to measure enrollment of children with disabilities in SSI. It is found that at least 1 million adults with severe functional limitations who are unable to work receive no Social Security disability benefits. It is argued that SIPP could be employed more effectively to see why this situation occurs and to more effectively examine the adequacy of benefits provided to persons with work disabilities. SIPP also provides a unique resource for studying changes in disability status and their socioeconomic impact which has been underutilized. Several recommendations for improving SIPP are provided.

DOI: 10.3233/JEM-1992-181-407

Journal: Journal of Economic and Social Measurement, vol. 18, no. 1-4, pp. 125-154, 1992