Differences in disability insurance allowance rates

Abstract

Allowance rates for disability insurance (DI) applications vary by race and ethnicity, but it is unclear to what extent these differences are artifacts of other differing socio‐economic and health characteristics. This paper uses the 2015 American Community Survey linked to Social Security Administration administrative data to investigate DI application allowance rates among applicants aged 25–65. The analysis uses regression, propensity score matching, and inverse probability weighting to estimate differences in allowance rates by race and ethnicity among applicants who are similar on observable characteristics. Relative to raw comparisons, differences in multivariate analyses are substantially smaller in magnitude and are generally not statistically significant.