Income Support Policies and the Health of the Elderly

University Of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI

Investigators

Abstract

[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of this project is to evaluate whether income support policies affect health. There is increasing evidence that medical care accounts for only a limited portion of the variance in population health. Social and economic factors play a significant role, alongside biomedical factors, in explaining differences in health among individuals. Yet little is known about how, or even whether, social and economic policies affect health. Thus, this study focuses on whether the means tested income support policy for the elderly, which is currently Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and was Old Age Assistance (OAA) previous to 1974, affects elderly American's health. The proposal has three aims: 1) Evaluate whether within state changes in maximum state OAA and SSI benefits impacted within state changes in elderly mortality rates; 2) Evaluate whether within state changes in OAA benefits between 1940 and 1960 produced within state changes in mortality rates among the elderly for those aged 65 to 70 as compared to those aged 60 to 65. Individuals below age 65 were not eligible for OAA, but are relatively similar to those aged 65 to 70, thus can act as a control group; 3) evaluate whether the transition to SSI from OAA reduced the differences in mortality rates between blacks and whites. In many southern states OAA benefits were miserly. Southern politicians restricted black southerner's access to the benefits. But the implementation of SSI forced all states to have a standard minimum benefit level and standardized eligibility. Thus, blacks would be more likely than whites to benefit from the transition from OAA to SSI, thus reducing the mortality gap between them. In sum, the general empirical strategy, for all three aims, involves state and year fixed models to evaluate whether within state variation in maximum OAA and SSI benefits over time affects within state changes is elderly mortality. Maximum state OAA and SSI benefits are used because they are not plausibly endogenous with individual health. All models will control for within state changes in demographic and economic trends by drawing on the Current Population Survey, the decennial U.S. Census, and data from the annual Census statistical abstracts. Mortality data, both aggregate and individual level, is available from the National Center for Health Statistics. [unreadable] [unreadable]