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The National Beneficiary Survey (NBS)

Reports

National Beneficiary Survey: Disability Statistics, 2015. This report, released in March 2018, provides key descriptive statistics from the 2015 NBS, including beneficiary characteristics and health, program and service participation, employment interest and activity, job characteristics, and benefits and employment interaction.

Employment Experiences of Young Adults and High Earners Who Receive Social Security Disability Benefits: Findings from Semi structured Interviews. This paper, completed as part of the 2015 round of the NBS and published in March 2016, provides information on the obstacles to finding and maintaining a job and the variety of strategies beneficiaries use to overcome them.

Prior analyses of the NBS data have shown the many factors that can help or hinder a beneficiary’s efforts to find work. To complement the NBS, we used SSA administrative data to identify SSI recipients and SSDI beneficiaries whose patterns of work and earning suggested they had the best odds of reducing their dependence on benefits or leaving the benefit rolls. We conducted in-depth interviews asking them about their benefit experiences and their attempts to find and keep jobs. The following papers, completed as a part of the Ticket to Work (TTW) evaluation, provide general statistics for Social Security beneficiaries with disabilities and TTW participants. For more information on the TTW evaluation and links to all the reports, please visit the TTW page.

2010 National Beneficiary Survey: Methodology and Descriptive Statistics, Final Report. This paper, completed as a part of the TTW evaluation and published in April 2012, provides a description of the sampling design and the data collection activities for Round 4 (2010) of the Social Security Administration (SSA) National Beneficiary Survey (NBS). The NBS collects data from a national sample of working-age (age 18 to 64) DI and SSI beneficiaries and a sample of TTW participants. In this paper, we update the descriptive statistics from the appendices to earlier TTW evaluation reports. In this paper we do not analyze the NBS data, but rather provide a data resource to support the analyses conducted in other papers for the seventh report.  It also provides general statistics for Social Security beneficiaries with disabilities and TTW program participants.

2006 National Beneficiary Survey: Methodology and Descriptive Statistics, Final Report. This paper, published in October 2009, provides a description of the sampling design and the data collection activities for Round 3 (2006) of the Social Security Administration (SSA) National Beneficiary Survey (NBS). The NBS collects data from a national sample of working-age (age 18 to 64) DI and SSI beneficiaries and a sample of TTW participants. In this paper, we update the descriptive statistics from the appendices to earlier TTW evaluation reports. It does not include analysis, but rather is a data resource to support the analyses conducted in other papers for the fifth report and for general information about SSA beneficiaries with disabilities.

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Fact Sheets

These Fact Sheets answer questions about SSDI beneficiaries and SSI recipients, including Ticket to Work participants, using data from the NBS.

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NBS Fact Sheet 1: Health Insurance Coverage
This Fact Sheet examines how many SSA beneficiaries have health insurance and whether beneficiaries who work are more likely to have healthcare than those who do not work.

NBS Fact Sheet 2: Health Status
This Fact Sheet examines how SSA beneficiaries rate their own health and whether working beneficiaries are healthier than non-working beneficiaries.

NBS Fact Sheet 3: Work and Work Goals
This Fact Sheet examines how many SSA beneficiaries are working or have an interest in working.

NBS Fact Sheet 4: Reason Not Working
This Fact Sheet examines the reasons SSA beneficiaries reported for not working in 2004.

NBS Fact Sheet 5: TTW Awareness
This Fact Sheet examines beneficiary awareness of Ticket to Work and several other SSA work incentive programs in 2006. It compares awareness of work incentives for work-oriented beneficiaries and beneficiaries who are not work-oriented.

NBS Fact Sheet 6: TTW Participant Characteristics
This Fact Sheet examines the characteristics of Ticket to Work participants and how they compare to non-participants.

NBS Fact Sheet 7: Service Use
This Fact Sheet examines the service use of SSI and SSDI beneficiaries and their reasons for using services

NBS Fact Sheet 8: Service Use by Work-Oriented Status
This Fact Sheet examines the service use of work-oriented and not work-oriented beneficiaries and their reasons for using services.

NBS Fact Sheet 9: Work Activity by Title
This Fact Sheet examines the work activity of SSI, SSDI, and concurrent beneficiaries, including their wages and hours worked.

NBS Fact Sheet 10: Work Activity by Ticket to Work Participation
This Fact Sheet examines the work activity of Ticket to Work participants and nonparticipants, including their wages and hours worked.

NBS Fact Sheet 11: National Comparisons of Work
This Fact Sheet examines the employment rate and full-time work of Social Security disability beneficiaries compared to the working-age US population and working-age persons with a disability.

NBS Fact Sheet 12: Health Insurance Over Time
This Fact Sheet compares health insurance coverage in 2003 and 2014 using data from rounds 1 and 5 of the National Beneficiary Survey.

NBS Fact Sheet 13: Educational Attainment Over Time
This Fact Sheet compares the educational attainment of disability beneficiaries in 2005 and 2015 using data from rounds 2 and 5 of the National Beneficiary Survey.

NBS Fact Sheet 14: Sociodemographic Characteristics of Beneficiaries by Work Orientation
This Fact Sheet examines the characteristics of work-oriented beneficiaries and how they compare to those who are not work-oriented.

NBS Fact Sheet 15: Internet Use Among Beneficiaries
This Fact Sheet examines the internet use of Social Security disability beneficiaries.

Related Papers
The following papers, also completed as part of the TTW evaluation, use NBS data:

Final TTW Evaluation Report

Fifth TTW Evaluation Reports

Fourth TTW Evaluation Report
Third TTW Evaluation Report
Second TTW Evaluation Report
First TTW Evaluation Report

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