Aaron Sullivan
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aaronsullivan.bsky.social
Aaron Sullivan
@aaronsullivan.bsky.social
86 followers 260 following 0 posts
Currently: Postdoc @UCIrvine Criminology; Economics PhD from @UCIrvine
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Reposted by Aaron Sullivan
ucisocialecology.bsky.social
Research into how racial and language-based disparities combine to shape the experiences of Latinos in the criminal justice system has earned UC Irvine economics doctoral student Santiago Campos-Rodríguez a $25,000 UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Institute award. tinyurl.com/SCRuclaaward
May 13, 2025 at 6:27 PM
Reposted by Aaron Sullivan
sydneyg.bsky.social
Well that's my cue. ✨NEW WP✨

What happens when SSA downsizes field office staff, even if the offices stay open? Fewer people end up enrolled for benefits.

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Employee Exodus: The Impact of Government Downsizing on Benefit Access Sydney Gordon Last Updated: February 26, 2025 Abstract The U.S. Social Security Administration is responsible for administering retirement, disability, and low-income safety net programs to approximately 64 million people, supported by their network of field offices providing in-person customer service. While closing field offices has been shown to decrease take-up for disability benefit applicants, it may be enticing to instead reduce costs by keeping offices open but reducing staffing levels. I use employee microdata in the context of a period of exogenous, drastic staffing decreases during the Reagan administration and analyze the impacts across the various programs that SSA administrates. Using a long differences approach, I find that a 10% decrease in field office employees in a county led to a 0.06% decrease in benefits enrollment for OASDI and 0.32% decrease in supplemental security insurance (SSI) enrollment, driven primarily by disability beneficiaries and low-income old-age SSI beneficiaries. I find no significant impact on traditional retirement benefits but a marginally significant impact on old-age SSI benefits, suggesting OASDI has a lower administrative burden or recipients pursue alternative methods of interacting with the agency. I do back-of-the-envelope calculations to determine the total effect size and find that the downsizing translates to a shortfall of 79,027 people nationally (47,285 OASDI, 31,742 SSI) who counterfactually would have enrolled by the end of this period. I then propose a new measure of administrative cost per marginal beneficiary to benchmark across welfare programs.
February 26, 2025 at 11:24 PM