RDRC — Research Projects
Social Security is the foundation of retirement and disability income support in the United States. The age-qualified OASI program, health-qualified SSDI program, and means-based SSI program together provide income streams totaling $1.4 trillion annually to over 70 million beneficiaries, or over 20 percent of the U.S. population. Most of the other 80 percent of Americans can anticipate benefits from one or more Social Security programs at some point in their lifetimes, based on their own work history, the work history of a spouse or parent, or from SSI. Thus, Social Security is imbedded in the social and economic fabric and lifecycle planning of nearly every American household.
In recent years, the increasing acknowledgement of structural racism in American society, the societal upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the emergence of “deaths of despair” and declining life expectancies among some less-educated populations in midlife have exposed distributional variations, disparities, structural barriers, and other inequities in program accessibility for and impact on people of different socioeconomic, health, race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality, education, and/or other circumstances. To learn about these issues, the focus of the research projects in the current 2024-2028 phase of the NBER-RDRC is to better understand the variations, inequities, and disparities in accessibility and impact of Social Security, and thereby, to inform future decisions about Social Security policy and administration.
Some of the research reported herein was performed pursuant to grants #RRC08098400, #DRC12000002, #RDR18000003, and #RDR23000006 from the US Social Security Administration (SSA) funded as part of the Retirement and Disability Research Consortium. The opinions and conclusions expressed are solely those of the authors and do not represent the opinions or policy of NBER, SSA or any agency of the Federal Government. Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof, nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of the contents of this report. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise does not necessarily constitute or imply endorsement, recommendation or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof.