Determinants of racial differentials in allowance rates for social security disability benefits

Conclusion

The results of these models suggest that there may be discrimination in the award process.We find that the award rate for black applicants is relatively lower than that of white applicants with similar characteristics. A significant race and sex effect remains in the variation of the award rate after all eligibility-related factors and other factors have been controlled for.The second model is more interesting, in that the race and sex effects are significant even after looking only at eligible applicants.However, we do not know how much of these effects are caused by our imputation of the eligibility criterion from the survey data instead of the explicit criterion from the program data.