Disability benefit coverage and program interactions in the working-age population

Over three-fourths of the working-age population in the United States is insured for Disability Insurance (DI); this group is protected against a total loss of earned income typically associated with severe disability. However, little is known about the role the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program plays in protecting against the financial consequences of severe disability for this population. We find that over one-third (36 percent) of the working-age population is covered by SSI in the event of a severe disability. Three important implications follow, which we discuss in sequence below: (1) SSI increases the overall coverage of the working-age population; (2) SSI enhances the bundle of cash benefits available to disabled individuals; and (3) interactions with other programs also enhance the safety net, most notably in the area of health insurance coverage. Ignoring these implications could lead to inaccurate inferences about disability program coverage, health insurance coverage, and the well-being of working-age individuals with disabilities. The first major finding is that SSI substantially increases overall cash benefit coverage. Thus SSI dramatically increases protection against the financial risk of disablement in the working-age population. While roughly 23 percent of the U.S. working-age population was not insured for DI in November 1996, SSI provides coverage for more than half of this seemingly "uncovered" population. An important innovation of our analysis is that we account for the possibility that many of those who appear ineligible for SSI based on current income could become eligible as a result of a disability shock that causes their earnings to drop. Thus the estimated proportion that is protected by SSI increases when the possibility of earnings loss because of disability is considered. Considering DI and SSI together, roughly 90 percent of the working-age population would be potentially covered for benefits in the event of a disability. Those who are covered by SSI--as opposed to those covered by DI alone-tend to be relatively young, less educated, and in relatively poor health. The remaining 10 percent or so are not covered by either DI or SSI. This group is economically vulnerable in some sense (they are poorer, older, and more likely to be women than those covered only by DI), but they are not as economically vulnerable in terms of income, resource holdings, and private health insurance coverage as those who are eligible for SSI. A disproportionate share of those who are not covered by either DI or SSI consists of married women. The second major finding is that SSI substantially enhances the bundle of available cash benefits. Roughly one-third of those covered by DI are initially covered by SSI as well. SSI enhances the bundle of available cash benefits through two mechanisms: (1) SSI provides cash payments during the 5-month DI waiting period, and (2) SSI supplements the DI benefit after the DI waiting period for people whose initial SSI payment is larger than the DI benefit. We find that the role of SSI cash payments is temporary for most of those who are initially covered by both SSI and DI: They would receive SSI during the DI waiting period, but would lose SSI eligibility afterwards because the higher DI benefit completely offsets the SSI benefit. However, a smaller group of DI beneficiaries with low DI benefit levels would continue to be covered by both SSI and DI after the DI waiting period because the relatively low DI benefit would not completely offset the SSI benefit. The third major finding is that interactions with other programs also substantially enhance the safety net. The most important interactions involve health insurance coverage. In the working-age population, Medicare is available to DI beneficiaries, but only after a 24-month waiting period. By contrast, SSI is an important pathway to Medicaid benefits for severely disabled adults with limited income and resources and has no waiting period. SSI can provide a pathway to health insurance coverage during the 24-month Medicare waiting period for some DI beneficiaries through providing access to Medicaid. Interactions with other programs, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Food Stamp, Unemployment Insurance (UI), workers' compensation (WC), and veterans' disability programs, modify the role of DI and SSI in protecting people against the adverse financial effects of disablement. The nature of the interactions with other programs differs depending on individual circumstances. Employment-related programs (including UI, WC, and veteran's disability programs) are particularly important for those who are covered by DI. By contrast, the means-tested programs (including TANF and Food Stamp) are more important for those who would be eligible for SSI. In conclusion, SSI plays a substantial role in protecting working-age people against the adverse financial consequences of disablement through three mechanisms: (1) providing coverage to many who are not DI insured; (2) providing additional cash benefits to many who are DI insured and also covered by SSI; and (3) enhancing the social safety net by interacting with other programs, most notably Medicaid. Through these mechanisms, the role of SSI is substantial enough that it cannot be safely ignored in econometric and policy research on DI.     

Pop Goes IR? Researching the Popular Culture–World Politics Continuum

In this article we offer a potential research agenda for the study of popular culture in IR and outline how this research agenda could be advanced. If the incorporation of popular culture into IR is going to be fruitful, there must be a willingness to go beyond an engagement with illustrations of world politics. Doing so will get us closer to what is at stake in the mutual implication of popular culture and world politics.     

Resistance to European Law and Constitutional Identity in Germany: Herbert Kraus and Solange in its Intellectual Context

This article recasts our understanding of the Federal Constitutional Court's Solange decision by tracing its lineage within the domestic context and as part of a new history of EU law. The external dynamic of the decision, a moment of judicial discourse between two of Europe's highest panels, has been the focus of many studies. Much rarer are attempts to embed the decision within its internal context: the struggle within the German legal academy to accept the primacy of EU law. Central to this contextualisation is the reinvigoration of the ‘structural congruence’ theory of Herbert Kraus, which long shaped the German reception of EU law. This article recounts Kraus' theory, tracing the struggle for the German legal consciousness between three positions: constitutionalists, traditionalists, and the congruence advocates. While Hallstein's constitutionalism is most closely associated with Germany's early Europhilia, even he admitted by 1975 that Kraus had won the day.     

‘Moving in place’: Drought and poverty dynamics in South Wollo,Ethiopia

This article discusses the impact of drought on poverty dynamics in the South Wollo area of northeastern Ethiopia. Using both survey and anthropological/qualitative data covering a six-year period, the paper assesses which households were able to hold on to assets and recover from the 1999–2000 drought and which were not. It suggests that while the incidence of poverty changed very little during 1997 to 2003 despite the occurrence of a major drought, the fortunes of the poorest improved, but not enough to keep them from poverty. The study concludes by asking how current policies affect patterns of poverty and inequality and what might be done to improve welfare in South Wollo.     

Youth,violence, and courtship in late-Victorian Birmingham: The case of James Harper and Emily Pimm

Late-Victorian England witnessed a decline in the recorded level of violence. Recent historical scholarship ascribes this fall to the 19th-century “civilising offensive” and suggests that male violence was effectively targeted by legislators and subject to increasingly stringent punishment by the courts. Yet concern with violence persisted. During the 1890s, it was expressed both in the enduring debate on the problem of male violence against women and in the growing anxieties surrounding youth gangs and “hooliganism.” This paper examines a criminal trial, held in Birmingham in 1898, which effectively fused these apparently disparate phenomena. The conviction of a young metal polisher, an alleged gang member, for the manslaughter of his former “sweetheart” aroused considerable comment in the local press. Both gang membership and violence against women were denounced as problems of the Birmingham “slums.” Close inspection of the trial reports suggests that neither the perpetrator nor the victim in this case conformed fully to the stereotypes of the gang member and his “moll” that were applied to them. Yet these stereotypes performed an important ideological function, distancing the problem of violence from the mainstream of civic life and thus preserving the veneer of English civility, whilst masking the persistence of male violence within courtship as well as marriage.     

The Utility of the Proximal Epiphysis of the Fifth Metatarsal in Age Estimation

Radiographs of 277 living individuals were assessed via a numerical scoring system to determine the timing of appearance and degree of fusion between the proximal epiphysis of the fifth metatarsal and its diaphysis. The epiphysis was observed to first appear in females at 8 years and 10 years in males and fuse by 14 years in females and 15 years in males. When assessing the level of agreement of category assignment, inter‐observer agreement was 78% for females and 64% for males whereas intra‐observer agreement was 77% for females and 86.1% for males. These results suggest that the maturation of the proximal epiphysis of the fifth metatarsal may be of value in age estimation in the child and that the scoring system is sufficiently robust to merit continued investigation. Previously this epiphysis has been considered an inconstant feature, but this research confirmed its presence in all individuals studied.     

This Time,it's for Real: The Health and Social Care Act 2012

This article examines the Health and Social Care Act 2012 and associated reforms to the National Health Service in England. It focuses on the Act's policy of making the NHS market more ‘real’, by both encouraging and compelling NHS bodies to act as ‘market players’. The article considers whether the reforms are compatible with the constitutional requirements of accountability for the provision of a public service such as the NHS. It argues that the reforms threaten accountability for three reasons: they make the Secretary of State for Health's relationship with the NHS more complex, they create opaque networks of non‐statutory bodies which may influence NHS decision‐making, and (especially in relation to competition) they ‘juridify’ policy choices as matters of law. Taken together, these arguments suggest that there is force in the claim that the reforms will contribute to ‘creeping’ – and thus unaccountable – privatisation of the NHS.     

The Swansea Bureau: A model of diversion from the Youth Justice System

The Swansea Bureau is an innovative initiative designed to divert young people out of the formal processes of the Youth Justice System. The Swansea Bureau extends beyond simple diversion grounded in minimal or non-intervention and into tackling the underlying causes of youth crime through mechanisms that normalise youth offending and promote prosocial behaviour, children's rights, youth participation and the engagement of both parents/carers and the local community. Inter-agency working is pursued in a political, strategic and operational context of viewing young people as ‘children first, offenders second’. This article discusses the development of the Bureau and explores how this child-orientated model is beginning to yield positive results in terms of decreases in first time entrants into the Youth Justice System and reductions in reconviction. The Bureau process has also elicited widespread positive qualitative feedback from key stakeholders regarding its engagement with Welsh national policy, parents/carers and the children's rights agenda.     

Facing the challenges of research‐informed knowledge mobilization: ‘Practising what we preach’?

The political imperative to make public services more evidence based has contributed to the growth in the past two decades of both research and practice in the field of knowledge mobilization: the range of approaches to encourage the creation, sharing and use of research‐informed knowledge alongside other forms of knowledge. Paradoxically the growth of the field has made the challenge of encouraging research use much more complex and uncertain, and the roles of knowledge mobilizers much more diverse and demanding. This in‐depth interview study of knowledge mobilization in 51 agencies concerned with knowledge for public services breaks new ground in exploring a paradox at the heart of knowledge mobilization practice: the challenges that research agencies face in practising in research‐informed ways themselves.