Disability Benefit Receipt by State and County, 1970-2018: Description and Dataset

This paper describes the digitization of county-level data from Social Security Administration publications on Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) beneficiaries and Supplemental Security Income (SSI). Data sets are created that begin in the 1970s and go through until 2018, which are merged with population data to create rates of DI and SSI receipt in the working-age population. The variables are described and then used to analyze patterns in disability benefit receipt across counties and over time. Other data are also merged with these data to examine what is correlated with disability benefits at the county level. The DI and SSI data will be made freely available for use in examining a wide variety of disability policy questions.