Initial impacts of the Ticket to Work program on Social Security disability beneficiary service enrollment, earnings, and benefits

This paper presents estimates of Ticket to Work's (TTW) impacts on service enrollment, earnings, and benefit amounts during the first two years of program implementation in Phases 1 and 2 states. We estimated impacts using a longitudinal fixed effects model that tracked changes in outcomes of 4.7 million beneficiaries with disabilities covering the period from the year before the Phase 1 Ticket mailing in 2001 and continuing through the end of 2003. Our impact estimates indicate that TTW had a small impact on promoting service enrollment during the first year of TTW rollout. We find no compelling evidence that TTW affected beneficiary earnings and benefits during its first two years. Our impact findings for all outcomes are consistent with the expectation that changes in service enrollment would occur before changes in either earnings or benefit receipt. Additionally, the relatively small size of the service enrollment impacts is consistent with the low TTW participation rate, which was less than 1 percent during the first year of the rollout in Phase 1. Given the anticipated timing of impacts and the relatively small size of the service enrollment impacts, it is not surprising that we find no compelling evidence of subsequent impacts on earnings and benefit amounts at this early stage.