Jody Schimmel Hyde

Jody Schimmel Hyde's primary research interest is in policies to promote independence and self-sufficiency among people with disabilities, with a strong interest in both transition-age youth and adults nearing retirement. Her work covers policies related to employment and health care, with a particular focus on services and supports to assist federal disability beneficiaries. Schimmel Hyde has extensive experience conducting quantitative analyses using administrative data and nationally representative data sources, including the Health and Retirement Study, Survey of Income and Program Participation, Current Population Survey, and American Community Survey.

Schimmel Hyde is the deputy director of Mathematica’s Center for Studying Disability Policy, which provides actionable evidence to policymakers to inform decision making. She is currently leading the evaluation of the Social Security Administration’s Ticket to Work programs, which support beneficiaries in achieving their employment-related goals. For more than a decade, she has led research and data development activities for SSA’s Disability Analysis File (DAF), which aggregates administrative data across about one dozen sources into a research-ready file. She also currently leading the evaluation of an employment services program that focuses on young adults with disabilities under the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation’s Next Generation of Enhanced Employment Services project.

Beginning in 2024, Schimmel Hyde is a co-investigator of the University of Michigan’s Health and Retirement Study, focusing on its disability measures and SSA administrative data linkages. Using that data and other sources, she has directed numerous investigator-initiated research studies through SSA’s Disability Research Consortium and Retirement and Disability Research Consortium (RDRC), as well through the Employment Policy and Measurement Rehabilitation and Research Training Center funded by the National Institute of Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research. In the past, she led studies as part of SSA's evaluation of the Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Planning and Assistance programs, as well as studies of the Medicaid Buy-In and Medicaid Infrastructure Grant programs for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.