TY  - JOUR
AU  - Yelowitz,Aaron
TI  - Why Did the SSI-Disabled Program Grow So Much? Disentangling the Effect of Medicaid
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 6139
PY  - 1997
Y2  - August 1997
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6139
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6139.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Aaron Yelowitz
University of Kentucky
Department of Economics
335 Business and Economics Building
Lexington, KY  40506-0034
Tel: 859/257-7634
Fax: 859/323-1920
E-Mail: aaron@uky.edu
AB  - The number of participants in the SSI program grew by 1.1 million from 1987 to 1993.  This paper examines the role of Medicaid on the SSI participation decision.  I use the rapid growth in average Medicaid expenditure as a proxy for its value. OLS estimates of Medicaid's effect may be biased because of omitted variables bias and measurement error.  I therefore apply two-stage least squares to estimate Medicaid's effect, using average Medicaid expenditure for blind SSI recipients as an instrument.  These estimates show that rising Medicaid expenditure significantly increased SSI participation among adults with low permanent incomes, explaining 20 percent of the growth.
ER  -