Changing Characteristics of SSI Recipients with Autism over a Decade: A Cross Cohort Comparison

 

Background and Purpose: In 2015, 44,865 adolescents with autism, ages 13 to 17 years, relied on Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits, a 98% increase since 2010. Despite its pivotal importance, virtually nothing is known about how the characteristics and service needs of SSI recipients with autism has changed over time. Gaining such an understanding can help to ensure that current policies and programs are commensurate with the unique needs of this growing population. This study draws from two nationally representative datasets to contrast the characteristics of child-SSI recipients with autism that were enrolled in special education during the 2001/2002 school year to those enrolled during the 2012/2013 school year.

Methods: We compared data from Wave 1 of the National Longitudinal Transition Study 2 (NLTS2) to the newly released 2012 National Longitudinal Transition Study (NLTS2012). Our findings generalize to adolescents, ages 13 to 18 years, that received special education services under the autism category. We limited analysis to participants that received SSI within the last two years of data collection.  We report univariate proportions and 95% confidence intervals across several domains including individual and family characteristics, receipt of public benefits (such as TANF and food stamps) and employment training and experiences. We employed significance tests to assess for significant changes in proportions between the 2001/2002 cohort and the 2012/2013 cohort.

Results: In 2001, roughly 28% of adolescents with ASD received SSI compared to 25% in 2012. The distribution of age, gender and self-reported health did not vary across cohorts; however, there were significant differences in communication ability. From 2001 to 2012, the proportion of SSI recipients that had no trouble communicating increased from 17% to 43% while the proportion of recipients had a lot of trouble communicating or did not communicate at all fell from 37% in 2001 to 14% in 2012. The proportion of SSI recipients from households with incomes less than $20,000 was larger in 2012 (48% versus 34%). While there was only a 1 percentage difference in proportion of recipients that received any health insurance across cohorts, there was a large increase in the number of recipients that received government sponsored insurance between 2001(66%) and 2012 (97%). In contrast, the proportion of SSI recipients that received TANF fell from 27% in 2001 to 12% in 2012.

Conclusion and Implications: Findings from this study suggest that the demographic composition of SSI recipients with autism has significantly changed over the last decade. Future research should examine the association between federal policy reforms and adolescent participation in other government supports.