JSIT22-03: Employment Among Adolescent Children of SSDI Recipients

Approximately 18% of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) beneficiaries have children under the age of 18, and 6% of teenagers overall live with a parent with a work-limiting disability. These disabilities not only negatively affect the wellbeing of the parents, but also their children. Recent literature explores the effect of parental work limiting disabilities on the wellbeing of their adolescent children and finds adverse effects in terms of less time on school activities and lower economic mobility but does not explicitly explore how SSDI receipt mitigates these factors. One important factor of adolescent wellbeing is their labor supply. Adolescent children of disabled parents may choose to enter into the labor force or work additional weeks of the year to help offset any lost income that comes from the parent’s disability and can directly affect family income, the child’s time use, and schooling choices. Understanding the role of SSDI receipt on labor force and schooling outcomes for these children is an important policy concern when evaluating the SSDI program.
I will use the 2014-2020 waves of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to estimate marginal the effect of SSDI receipt on adolescent labor supply. The SIPP contains detailed information on household composition, work-limiting disabilities, disability income, and work information for everyone at least 15 years old in the household. This will allow me to construct a sample of disabled parents of adolescent children and compare the child outcomes between parents who do and do not receive SSDI.