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Biomedical subjects

M Upp

Publications and source records attributed to M Upp.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

Relative importance of various income sources of the aged, 1980.

This article looks at the extent to which aged couples and nonmarried persons rely on earnings, retirement pensions, assets, and public assistance. The study notes the importance of these various sources to aged units with different levels of both total money income and retirement income, then examines changes in the relative importance of the different sources over time. The data indicate that 23 percent of all aged units had some income from earnings in 1980 and that 90 percent had income from Social Security. Asset income also was widely received. Twenty-two percent of the aged units had private pension income, and 12 percent had government-employee pensions. Public assistance was received by 10 percent of the aged units.

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Low-income aged: eligibility ad participation in SSI.

This article reports on a study undertaken to evaluate the Social Security Administration's (SSA) methods for estimating the number of persons eligible for Federal Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments. SSA estimates that 65-70 percent of the aged eligible for SSI actually participate in the program. It has been argued that the actual participation rate may be either higher or lower than SSA estimates because SSA misestimates the size of the eligible population. SSA bases its estimates of the number of persons eligible on data in the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey (CPS). In this study, a sample of 2,000 low-income aged persons was interviewed in 1979, and two sets of information were collected: One duplicated the data used by SSA to make its estimates; the other duplicated the type of information collected when a person actually applies for SSI. When the two sets were compared, it was found that the methodology that SSA uses to estimate the size of the eligible population and the information collected from SSI applicants produced estimates that were quite similar. The study also evaluated theories to explain why some persons eligible for SSI do not claim benefits. The study found that the elderly are more likely to participate in SSI if they live in States that supplement Federal SSI payments and that do not have a history of imposing liens on the property of welfare recipients. Participants also tend to have somewhat lower incomes (excluding SSI) than nonparticipants. No evidence was found that variations in practices among Social Security district offices could account for differences in SSI participation rates.

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Mortality and early retirement.

This article examines and compares the survival rates of persons claiming retired-worker benefits at age 62 with those who did not. The study is based on a sample of Social Security insured workers who reached age 62 during the period 1962-72. The proportion of men dying in the initial years after age 62 was higher among those who claimed benefits at age 62 than among those who did not. The same pattern held for women but the difference was very small. To the extent that survival after age 62 can be taken as an indication of health status at age 62, these data suggest that the age-62 claimants were somewhat more likely than others to have had health problems. The difference in survival rates between the two groups, however, was not as great as the difference in the incidence of health problems reported in surveys. Past surveys have shown that men receiving early retirement benefits were twice as likely as other men to report health problems. According to this study, survival rates for men claiming benefits at age 62 were only 3-5 percentage points lower by age 68 than those for other insured men. Within any given age cohort, the difference between survival rates of age-62 claimants and other insured men widened over time. Survival rates improved across the age cohorts. Among the men, survival rates improved somewhat more for the age-62 claimants than for others.

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