Promoting Readiness of Minors in Supplemental Security Income (PROMISE): Youth and Family Outcomes Five Years After Enrollment
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Promoting Readiness of Minors in Supplemental Security Income (PROMISE): Youth and Family Outcomes Five Years After Enrollment

Published: Dec 29, 2022
Publisher: Mathematica
Health Disability Transition to Adulthood Employment Youth Employment Federal Research and Evaluation
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Associated Project

Evaluation of the Promoting the Readiness of Minors in Supplemental Security Income PROMISE Grants

Time frame: 2013-2022

Prepared for:

Social Security Administration

Key Findings
  • PROMISE improved only a few of the primary youth outcomes and the impacts varied by program.
  • Some programs increased youth employment and income. Two programs increased youth’s employment rate five years after enrollment and three programs increased youth’s income during the five years after enrollment. No program reduced the amount of SSA payments youth received during the five-year evaluation period.
  • With a few exceptions, the programs did not affect parents’ employment rates, earnings, SSA payments, income, or Medicaid and Medicare expenditures.
  • We found variation in programs’ impacts according to youth or family characteristics. MD PROMISE and NYS PROMISE had an impact on labor market outcomes for youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities but not for youth with other impairments. We also found evidence that some programs improved labor market outcomes in families in which a parent was receiving SSA payments at the time of random assignment.
  • Over the five-year evaluation period, none of the programs generated positive net benefits across all stakeholder groups. The net benefits per treatment group family ranged from -$16,269 in WI PROMISE to -$37,882 in Arkansas PROMISE.

This report presents estimates of the five-year impacts of the PROMISE programs on youth and parent outcomes. PROMISE—Promoting Readiness of Minors in Supplemental Security Income (SSI)—was a joint initiative of the U.S. Department of Education, the Social Security Administration (SSA), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the U.S. Department of Labor to promote positive change in the lives of youth with disabilities who received SSI and their families. Six state agencies across 11 states implemented model demonstration projects in which they enrolled youth ages 14 through 16 who were receiving SSI. The programs intended to (1) offer educational, vocational, and other services to youth; and (2) make better use of existing resources by improving service coordination between state and local agencies.

The outcomes cover domains that the programs were designed to affect: education, employment, self-determination, expectations about the youth’s future, health insurance coverage and expenditures, income, and participation in SSA and other public assistance programs. We estimate five-year impacts of the PROMISE programs on outcomes covering domains that the programs were designed to affect: education, employment, self-determination, expectations about the youth’s future, health insurance coverage and expenditures, income, and participation in SSA and other public assistance programs. We also present findings from analyses of the benefits and costs of the PROMISE programs and summarize findings from the PROMISE process and 18-month impact analyses we conducted previously.

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