BOND First-Year Snapshot of Earnings and Benefit Impacts for Stage 1

Abt Global, in partnership with 25 other organizations, is implementing and evaluating the Benefit Offset National Demonstration (BOND) under contract to the U.S. Social Security Administration. SSA awarded the contract for the implementation and evaluation of BOND to Abt Global in December 2009. The project will determine whether retaining benefits at higher levels of earnings will increase employment and income for recipients of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). 

BOND includes two stages. The report focuses on the initial impact of the benefit offset, along with certain changes to ancillary supports, on earnings and benefit outcomes for beneficiaries who were randomly assigned to the Stage 1 treatment group. Their outcomes are compared to those for beneficiaries randomly assigned to the Stage 1 control group, who continued to have their benefits adjusted on the basis of current law and current ancillary supports.This Snapshot Report is intended to provide a brief presentation of intermediate results, documents impacts on earnings and benefit outcomes—that is, earnings under the benefit offset relative to earnings under current rules—during the year the demonstration was launched, 2011.