scholarly journals Explaining Systematic Bias and Nontransparency in U.S. Social Security Administration Forecasts

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 336-362 ◽  
Author(s):  
Konstantin Kashin ◽  
Gary King ◽  
Samir Soneji
Keyword(s):  
Social Security ◽  
Random Noise ◽  
Companion Paper ◽  
Evidence Base ◽  
Systematic Evaluation ◽  
Systematic Bias ◽  
Social Security Administration ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
Trust Funds ◽  
Policy Proposals

The accuracy of U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) demographic and financial forecasts is crucial for the solvency of its Trust Funds, other government programs, industry decision-making, and the evidence base of many scholarly articles. Because SSA makes public insufficient replication information and uses antiquated statistical forecasting methods, no external group has ever been able to produce fully independent forecasts or evaluations of policy proposals to change the system. Yet, no systematic evaluation of SSA forecasts has ever been published by SSA or anyone else—until a companion paper to this one. We show that SSA's forecasting errors were approximately unbiased until about 2000, but then began to grow quickly, with increasingly overconfident uncertainty intervals. Moreover, the errors are largely in the same direction, making the Trust Funds look healthier than they are. We extend and then explain these findings with evidence from a large number of interviews with participants at every level of the forecasting and policy processes. We show that SSA's forecasting procedures meet all the conditions the modern social-psychology and statistical literatures demonstrate make bias likely. When those conditions mixed with potent new political forces trying to change Social Security, SSA's actuaries hunkered down, trying hard to insulate their forecasts from strong political pressures. Unfortunately, this led the actuaries into not incorporating the fact that retirees began living longer lives and drawing benefits longer than predicted. We show that fewer than 10% of their scorings of major policy proposals were statistically different from random noise as estimated from their policy forecasting error. We also show that the solution to this problem involves SSA or Congress implementing in government two of the central projects of political science over the last quarter century: (1) transparency in data and methods and (2) replacing with formal statistical models large numbers of ad hoc qualitative decisions too complex for unaided humans to make optimally.

scholarly journals Systematic Bias and Nontransparency in US Social Security Administration Forecasts

2015 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Konstantin Kashin ◽  
Gary King ◽  
Samir Soneji
Keyword(s):  
Social Security ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Systematic Bias ◽  
Social Security Administration ◽  
Trust Funds ◽  
The Social ◽  
Forecasting Errors ◽  
Policy Proposals ◽  
Made In

We offer an evaluation of the Social Security Administration demographic and financial forecasts used to assess the long-term solvency of the Social Security Trust Funds. This same forecasting methodology is also used in evaluating policy proposals put forward by Congress to modify the Social Security program. Ours is the first evaluation to compare the SSA forecasts with observed truth; for example, we compare forecasts made in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s with outcomes that are now available. We find that Social Security Administration forecasting errors—as evaluated by how accurate the forecasts turned out to be—were approximately unbiased until 2000 and then became systematically biased afterward, and increasingly so over time. Also, most of the forecasting errors since 2000 are in the same direction, consistently misleading users of the forecasts to conclude that the Social Security Trust Funds are in better financial shape than turns out to be the case. Finally, the Social Security Administration's informal uncertainty intervals appear to have become increasingly inaccurate since 2000. At present, the Office of the Chief Actuary, at the Social Security Administration, does not reveal in full how its forecasts are made. Every future Trustees Report, without exception, should include a routine evaluation of all prior forecasts, and a discussion of what forecasting mistakes were made, what was learned from the mistakes, and what actions might be taken to improve forecasts going forward. And the Social Security Administration and its Office of the Chief Actuary should follow best practices in academia and many other parts of government and make their forecasting procedures public and replicable, and should calculate and report calibrated uncertainty intervals for all forecasts.

Who’s at risk of entering Social Security Disability Insurance? A comparison of application and allowance rates for groups of at-risk individuals

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 341-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kara Contreary ◽  
Todd Honeycutt
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Social Security ◽  
Disability Insurance ◽  
Risk Groups ◽  
Evidence Base ◽  
Social Security Disability Insurance ◽  
Program Participation ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Social Security Disability ◽  
Employment Characteristics

BACKGROUND: The U.S. government has implemented several programs to reduce federal expenditures on Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) and help beneficiaries return to work, but the limited success of these efforts has raised interest in approaches that help workers with disabilities remain in the workforce. OBJECTIVE: This paper provides information on individuals at risk of applying for DI benefits to help build the evidence base for policies that provide workers with disabilities support to eliminate the need to apply for and receive DI benefits. METHODS: Using three panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation matched to SSA administrative data, we describe the employment characteristics of seven groups at risk of applying for DI benefits before and after application, as well as the outcomes of their DI applications. RESULTS: New private disability insurance recipients were more likely to apply for and receive DI than members of other at-risk groups. However, individuals with high healthcare expenditures made up the largest proportion of successful applicants across the at-risk groups considered here. CONCLUSION: While it seems plausible that individuals within an at-risk group who are likely to apply for DI benefits can be identified and provided supports to help them maintain employment, focusing on a specific group to promote employment over DI benefits may have a limited effect on the DI program because applicants come from multiple groups.

scholarly journals Overview of PROMISE

2020 ◽  
pp. 216514342098045
Author(s):  
David E. Emenheiser ◽  
Corinne Weidenthal ◽  
Selete Avoke ◽  
Marlene Simon-Burroughs
Keyword(s):  
Career Development ◽  
Social Security ◽  
Human Services ◽  
Technical Assistance ◽  
Department Of Education ◽  
Social Security Administration ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Health And Human Services ◽  
The Social ◽  
The U.S

Promoting the Readiness of Minors in Supplemental Security Income (PROMISE), a study of 13,444 randomly assigned youth and their families, includes six model demonstration projects and a technical assistance center funded through the U.S. Department of Education and a national evaluation of the model demonstration projects funded through the Social Security Administration. The Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services and the Executive Office of the President partnered with the Department of Education and Social Security Administration to develop and monitor the PROMISE initiative. This article provides an overview of PROMISE as the introduction to this special issue of Career Development and Transition for Exceptional Individuals.

Schwäche der Tarifautonomie und Legitimitätsfragen im Arbeitsrecht und im Sozialrecht

2016 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-236
Author(s):  
Stephan Seiwerth
Keyword(s):  
Social Security ◽  
Minimum Wage ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
System Change ◽  
State Regulation ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Security Administration ◽  
Collective Agreements ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Partners

AbstractSocial partners have played a privileged role in German social security administration since Bismarckian times. In 2014, a new legislation empowered the social partners to set the level of the statutory minimum wage and to demand the extension of collective agreements. This article examines the interdependence of the trade unions’ and employer organisations’ membership numbers and their involvement in state regulation of labour and social security law. In case the interest in autonomous regulations is not going to increase, the state will have to step in with more heteronomous regulation. This would incrementally lead to a system change.

scholarly journals Political and Economic Forces Sustaining Social Security

2004 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Casey B Mulligan ◽  
Xavier Sala-i-Martin
Keyword(s):  
Social Security ◽  
Market Failure ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Partial Solution ◽  
Companion Paper ◽  
Majority Voting ◽  
Pressure Group ◽  
Intergenerational Redistribution ◽  
Economic Forces ◽  
Political Theories

Abstract What economic forces create and sustain old-age Social Security as a public program? We relate political, efficiency, and narrative theories of Social Security to empirical results reported in our companion paper in this volume. Political theories, including rational majority voting and pressure group theories, feature a redistributive struggle among groups. "Efficiency theories," which model SS as a full or partial solution to market failure, include optimal redistribution, retirement insurance, and alleviating labor market congestion. Finally we analyze three "narrative" theories. Overall, retirement, and not alleviating poverty, seems important at the margin, which means that plans to reduce intergenerational redistribution may not be politically sustainable merely because they provide "adequate" incomes for the elderly. Politics seem important, because cross-cohort redistribution is so prevalent, even when the old are consuming as much or more than do the young. SS reform would therefore be assisted by political reforms equalizing political power across generations.

scholarly journals Heterogeneous Scarring Effects of Full-Year Nonemployment

2017 ◽  
Vol 107 (5) ◽  
pp. 369-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fatih Guvenen ◽  
Fatih Karahan ◽  
Serdar Ozkan ◽  
Jae Song
Keyword(s):  
Social Security ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Social Security Administration ◽  
Earnings Distribution ◽  
Employment Effects ◽  
Long Period ◽  
Earnings Losses ◽  
The Social ◽  
Scarring Effects

Drawing on administrative data from the Social Security Administration, we find that individuals that go through a long period of non-employment suffer large and long-term earnings losses (around 35-40 percent) compared to individuals with similar age and previous earnings histories. Importantly, these differences depend on past earnings, and are largest at the bottom and top of the earnings distribution. Focusing on workers that are employed 10 years after a period of long-term non-employment, we find much smaller earnings losses (8-10 percent). Furthermore, the large earnings losses of low-income individuals are almost entirely due to employment effects.

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