Trajectories of Benefit Receipt Among Young Adults with Intellectual and/or Developmental Disabilities In Wisconsin

Background and Purpose: Adults with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities (IDD) experience significant health and socioeconomic disparities relative to adults without IDD. This population is generally considered to use public benefits, like Medicaid and Supplemental Security Income (SSI), at high rates and have low levels of employment. Common data limitations, however, complicate efforts to get population-level estimates about benefit usage and employment rates as well as patterns of usage. This project aims to better understand patterns of public benefit receipt for young adults with IDD and compare how these patterns compare to young adults without IDD.

Methods: The Wisconsin Administrative Data Core (WADC) includes Wisconsin administrative data about wages along with benefit levels for major social safety net programs. Individuals with IDD will be identified using special education records for the class of 2010 and then followed from 2010 to 2024. Descriptive statistics are calculated to describe the analytic population at baseline in 2010 and then estimates of the proportion receiving different benefits and working will be plotted quarterly. Logistic regression will be used to identify predictors of employment and receipt of key public benefits (SSI, Medicaid, SNAP).

Results: Preliminary results show that young adults with IDD use public benefits at significantly higher rates than the general population. 69,991 individuals are observed in the class of 2010. Of these, 10,052 (14.4%) received special education for IDD. While 66.8% of those without IDD were ever employed in the 14 years following high school, 81.5% of those with IDD were employed in at least one quarter. Conditional on employment, however, those without IDD worked a mean of 38.5 quarters (SD=17.3) with mean quarterly wages of $5,053.48 (SD=3519.94) compared to a mean of 35.4 quarters (SD=17.8) with mean quarterly wages of $6,723.04 (SD=4349.65) for those with IDD. Compared to adults without IDD, adults with IDD had higher rates of receipt for SSI (18.3% vs. 0.8%), SSDI (8.9% vs. 0.8%), SNAP (61.6% vs. 33.5%), and Medicaid (72.2% vs. 46.8%). Adults with IDD were also incarcerated at much higher rates than adults without IDD, with 7.7% of adults with IDD being incarcerated at some point in the period compared to 1.7% of those without IDD.

Conclusions and Implications: Young adults with IDD experience worse employment outcomes than adults without IDD while using benefits at high rates. Young adults with IDD are also over four times as likely to be incarcerated in the 14 years following high school exit than adults without IDD. Despite the high rates of both employment and public benefits, adults with IDD continue to experience high rates of poverty and poor health, suggesting that current systems are insufficient for meeting the needs of this population. Future analyses will plot trajectories of public benefit use and employment and use logistic regressions to identify predictors of employment and public benefit use.