| Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) enrollment rates have risen sharply since the enactment of the Social Security Disability Benefits Reform Act of 1984, and on the national level, enrollment rates appear to track unemployment rates closely. This paper builds on previous research examining the relationship between SSDI and unemployment by using a fixed effects model to examine the association between SSDI enrollment and unemployment rates at the county level in the United States between 2000 and 2010. I find evidence of a statistically significant relationship between SSDI enrollment and unemployment, using both contemporaneous and lagged unemployment data, with some variation in the size of the relationship across regions and employment sectors. However, the magnitude of this relationship remains quite small across specifications. |
