Social Insurance Programs

Social insurance programs provide benefits to individuals who have paid into the program, or whose employers have paid into the program on their behalf, often in the form of payroll taxes. The major U.S. social insurance programs are Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment Insurance, Workers’ Compensation, and Disability Insurance.

Fast Focus Research/Policy Brief Icon

Understanding benefit cliffs and marginal tax rates

  • Fast Focus Policy Brief
  • September 2019
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Declining Returns to Low-Wage Work in Wisconsin

  • Anna Walther
  • Poverty Fact Sheet
  • September 2019
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Policy approaches to reducing poverty and deep poverty among children

  • Hilary Hoynes, Robert Moffitt, and Timothy Smeeding
  • Focus on Poverty & Classroom Supplement
  • September 2019
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Cutting the Child Poverty Rate by Half: A Report from the National Academies

  • Hilary Hoynes and Robert Moffitt
  • Webinar
  • May 15 2019
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Key Questions in U.S. Disability Policy

  • Manasi Deshpande
  • Webinar
  • December 5 2018
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Moving into and out of rural poverty

  • José D. Pacas and Elizabeth E. Davis
  • Focus on Poverty & Classroom Supplement
  • December 2018