Spotlight On: Disability Policy & Research

Disability is part of being human. Almost everyone will temporarily or permanently experience disability at some point in their life. According to the World Health Organization, over 1 billion people – about 16% of the global population – currently experience disability, and this number is rising, partly due to an aging population and the growing prevalence of noncommunicable diseases.

Since the 1990s, Abt has completed dozens of evaluation, implementation, and technical assistance projects for programs that serve adults and children with disabilities. Abt’s work has contributed to public policies and programs in employment, income supports, education, housing, and health that aim to promote social inclusion for all.  Our work for the Social Security Administration (SSA), U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and Administration for Community Living (ACL) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is helping build evidence to improve outcomes for people with disabilities.

Abt’s disability team comprises a multidisciplinary group of experts specializing in labor economics, evaluation methods, health policy research, survey methodology, qualitative analysis, quantitative analysis, and information technology. The team brings policy expertise in disability determination, work incentives, employment services and supports, early intervention, program costs, assistive technology and family and medical leave policies.

Meet some of our leaders in disability policy and research:

Abt’s disability team applies rigorous research methods to inform policy decisions for government agencies. Our work has focused on employment services and supports, early intervention after illness or injury, youth transition, disability program policies, and work incentives.

Assessing Strategies to Improve Employment for Youth with Disabilities

Abt is evaluating the DOL’s Equitable Transition Models (ETM) demonstration, designed to enhance employment outcomes for low-income youth and young adults with disabilities, a group that often faces significant challenges in accessing education, employment, and support services. Our work will include implementation, outcomes, and customer satisfaction studies, an evaluability assessment for an impact study, and broad dissemination of findings to inform future policies and practices. Abt is also collaborating with the Maryland State Department of Education as the internal evaluator of the Maryland Pathways to Partnership Initiative, a transition program for youth with disabilities funded by a Disability Innovation Fund grant.

Understanding Earnings Losses for Veterans with Service-Connected Disabilities

Working with our partner SAG Corporation, Abt is supporting the VA’s efforts to update regulations for the Disability Compensation program, which provides benefits to Veterans who sustained disabling conditions as a result of their service. Abt and SAG are creating estimates of earnings losses caused by service-connected disabilities, investigating variation in earnings losses, and creating supplemental materials to support the interpretation of results.

Long-Time Contributions to Disability Research and Program Implementation at the Social Security Administration

For the Lessons Learned in SSA Demonstrations Project, Abt collaborated with SSA and more than 30 national disability experts. This work synthesized lessons from SSA’s three decades of demonstrations, spanning changes to disability benefit rules and a variety of employment supports and program waivers. For this study, Abt facilitated a State of the Science Meeting and published a book in 2021.

Abt has also conducted numerous short-term policy and program assessments and evaluation design studies for SSA, analyzing demographic and economic trends that affect SSA programs and beneficiaries, the data used to guide disability determination, and SSA’s employment support programs. For example, Abt’s disability program experts assessed the payment systems SSA uses in the Ticket to Work program, community-based services for youth receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and approaches to providing benefits counseling to disability beneficiaries. These short-term research studies provide information SSA needs to inform decision making, improve the administration and effectiveness of programs, and enhance Congressional and stakeholder confidence in its policy decisions.

Abt was the prime contractor implementing and evaluating SSA’s Benefit Offset National Demonstration (BOND). Working with a team of nearly 30 partners, Abt implemented the demonstration and designed and conducted process, participation, and impact analyses of the effects of the benefit offset. Abt also implemented SSA’s Promoting Opportunity Demonstration (POD), delivering work incentives counseling to demonstration participants and using the Abt-developed data system to collect and report participant earnings to SSA.

Abt’s work has informed SSA’s efforts to examine disparities in disability programs and to promote equity. In An Investigation on Bias in the Quick Disability Determinations (QDD) Model, Abt’s researchers examined whether some groups of disability applicants, specifically those defined by race/ethnicity, sex, age, and medical condition, are systematically excluded from QDD identification. We analyzed SSA’s administrative data, reviewed of health equity literature and interviewed experts with front-line experience to explore the presence of bias and potential root causes and mitigations. Abt conducted an intersectional analysis of BOND to understand whether the experiences of demonstration volunteers differed by interactions of race, ethnicity, and sex. We also explored methods to predict race and ethnicity to help SSA in its efforts to address missing data on these items in its administrative systems.