Incentives to disability in federal disability insurance and supplemental security income.

Between 1989 and 1994, Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income, the 2 federal programs that provide disability benefits, expanded rapidly. The largest growth has been among recipients with mental disorders in the Disability Insurance program and among children with learning disabilities in the Supplemental Security Income program. The expansion was partly due to changes in eligibility rules and partly to other factors including outreach efforts by the Social Security Administration and a lack of funds to review and terminate cases. Factors that keep many of the disabled from seeking work include a fear of being unable to obtain health insurance, which is provided to beneficiaries under Disability Insurance and Social Security Insurance, and the fear of being unable to obtain and keep stable employment. Although children's Supplemental Security Income benefits have reduced poverty in families with disabled children, there is some evidence that parents are encouraging their children to behave poorly so they can qualify. Replacing present welfare and disability programs with national health insurance and a guaranteed annual income would eliminate the work disincentives, but such dramatic restructuring is unlikely in the context of present political debates.

Social Security and the myth of the entitlement "crisis".

Although public support for Social Security remains high, confidence in the viability of the program has declined. The decline in confidence reflects confusion generated by public dialogue about various crises, the most recent being the "entitlement crisis." This article discusses two central ideological themes of the entitlement crisis, that entitlement spending is crowding out funds for other social needs and that current trends are unsustainable. It questions the substantive basis of these themes and then critically evaluates two proposals for the restructuring of Social Security, means-testing and privatization.

Race and gender differences in the distribution of home and community-based services in Florida.

This article examines the distribution of home and community-based services (HCBS) under Florida's Medicaid waiver program. Controlling for personal and community characteristics, it was found that gender and race significantly affect the access of the disabled adult population to HCBS services, with women and nonwhites significantly more likely to be receiving HCBS services. At the county level, the likelihood of one's being in the waiver program is contingent on the racial composition and level of segregation of the county. People residing in counties with substantial proportions of nonwhites are less likely to receive HCBS services--whatever their race. However, the higher the rate of racial segregation in the county, the higher the probability that the Medicaid disabled adult population will receive HCBS services. The Medicaid waiver program allows older, disabled black women to remain in their home neighborhoods rather than having to move to predominantly white areas where nursing homes are concentrated. Thus, the HCBS program not only provides them with a form of care that is preferred by most older people but also resolves market problems stemming from the lack of nursing homes in segregated areas by taking advantage of support systems in black households.

Satisfaction with early retirement: making choices in the auto industry.

In recent decades, the expanded availability of early retirement incentive plans has allowed an increasing number of workers to retire at an age younger than normally allowed by their pension plans. On the surface, these retirement incentives appear to offer older workers more flexibility in deciding when to retire. However, the offer of early retirement incentives frequently occurs when employers are attempting to reduce employment; therefore, the opportunity for early retirement may be counterbalanced by downsizing goals that place older workers' continued employment in jeopardy. Early retirement incentive programs are thereby characterized by an unusual combination of inducement and coercion. In this study, we examined how the structure of the early retirement program shapes the way older male auto workers evaluate their retirement transitions. We conclude that the structure of the early retirement program, the timing of the retirement decision, and job security are important in framing the retirement transition and in distinguishing levels of satisfaction with the retirement experience.

Falling into the Medicaid gap: the hidden long-term care dilemma.

This study describes the income, health, and functional capacity of older Florida residents who fall into the Medicaid gap--those whose incomes are too high to obtain eligibility for Medicaid yet too low to cover the cost of nursing home care as private pay patients--and examines the strategies adopted by their primary caregivers. Our findings suggest that few strategies succeed in alleviating this all but unresolvable problem, that those caught in the gap receive inadequate medical care, and that their primary caregivers face tremendous financial and emotional burdens with little hope for relief.

Generational equity and the politics of the welfare state.

The concept of generational equity--that the nation is squandering its wealth on entitlements to the elderly while children remain impoverished--has received considerable media attention. The author traces the source of that message to an organization, Americans for Generational Equity, which is dedicated to restructuring the Social Security system along the lines of a social assistance program: reduced benefits available at later ages only to those who qualify through means tests. The impact of this agenda would be to increase the labor force participation of older people, particularly women and minorities, those presently without private pension coverage and already heavily represented in that sector of the economy where labor shortage is developing. Defining national spending priorities in terms of intergenerational conflict obscures the fact that Social Security is the only U.S. welfare program that has been successful in reducing poverty levels.

The Social Security program and the private sector alternative: lessons from history.

As the Social Security program in the United States emerged from the crisis of the 1970s with a solid set of reforms intended to guarantee the program's financial solvency into the twenty-first century, a new attack on the system arose in the form of debates centering around the relationship of the Social Security fund to the federal deficit. Conservative economists used concerns about the national economy as fuel for their own arguments that Social Security has negatively affected the economy and that heavier reliance should be placed on private sector benefits. This paper uses historical evidence to analyze how adequately private sector benefits functioned in the past. Among the conclusions reached are that the private sector failed to provide adequate protection for older citizens, and that benefits were inequitably distributed on the basis of gender and social class. Any tendency toward heavier reliance on the private sector for provisions for old age security would only exacerbate existing inequalities.

Old age security and the family life course: A case study of nineteenth-century mennonite immigrants to Kansas.

According to life course analysis, age systems create socially recognized turning points, which outline life paths, channel people into positions and roles, and determine the distribution of rights and obligations. Yet few studies have examined these social parameters. Another problem with life course research is its ahistoricity. Even specifically historical studies have often been unable to measure the dynamics of change because of their use of cross-sectional household data, which only measures a small portion of kinship relations. This case study of the Mennonite family of Cornelius and Helena Richert Voth, who migrated from Russia to the Kansas Plains in 1874, analyzes the role that religious and ethnic traditions and inheritance rules play in preserving family stability, providing security in old age, and shaping the family life course. It contributes to our understanding of the social determinants of life course change by illustrating how traditional Mennonite patterns of family organization and property transmission, formed during centuries of community life in Prussia and Russia, shaped the timing of life course transitions and how the differing social, political, and economic conditions the immigrants encountered on the American frontier altered those traditional patterns.