Can retaining SSA disability benefits spur beneficiaries to work?

Will Keeping More Benefits Motivate Disability Beneficiaries to Work?  

Can retaining disability benefits spur beneficiaries to work?  Abt Associates is answering this question for the Social Security Administration (SSA) through its implementation and evaluation of the Benefit Offset National Demonstration (BOND).  The nine -year project, begun in 2009, involves randomly assigning more than one million disability beneficiaries in 10 randomly selected U.S. sites.  Abt’s findings promise critical insights as to whether allowing beneficiaries to keep more of their benefits, despite reaching a certain earnings threshold, motivates them to increase their work effort and earnings.  In addition to offering this financial incentive, the demonstration will also test whether offering BOND participants enhanced counseling—to assist them in understanding the rule changes and how to take advantage of them—will lead to higher earnings than eliminating the “SGA cash cliff” without additional counseling.  The results of BOND will be used to determine whether and how rules for Social Security Disability Insurance should be changed.