How Social Security Administration Cuts Affect You – American Prospect

“A timely research paper looking at SSA staff cuts in the 1980s found that it led to tens of thousands of Americans not getting their earned benefits.”

“A remarkably timely research paper actually looked at this very time period. Sydney Gordon, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Irvine, wanted to study whether federal workforce downsizing had an impact on access to benefits. What she found at the SSA between 1985 and 1990 should serve as an eerie warning to Trump’s hatchet job on the federal workforce.

“This paper, published just last week, estimated that for every 10 percent decrease in field office employees in a particular county, there was a small reduction (0.06 percent) in enrollment for traditional Social Security, and a larger reduction—about 0.32 percent—in enrollment for Supplemental Security Income (SSI), intended for people with disabilities and older, poor adults.”

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