A sad but very common scenario is where a claimant, after several months have passed, gets a denial letter. Then he filed an appeal and wait a little more. Once a gain, he received a denial letter though it stated that an appeal may be filed and this time it involves a hearing before an administrative law judge. The hearing was then set. Unfortunately it doesn’t end there. After hearing, a number of weeks or even months shall be waited before a decision is promulgated. And even if approval was granted many weeks more before benefits are made available. Availability depends also if system in a particular state of residence, is clogged or not. It may take up to two and a half years before disability benefits are ever received.

Most of claimants are shocked to know lengthy process of a claim. Unfortunately, only a few know this blatant reality. Claimants only realize this when their finances are already at minimum or worse. Too late though, but only bright spot is that amount they received in due benefits can cure their situation.

Current program rules concerning NCMs assesses sensitivity of distributional outcomes to unit of observation, timeframe of income measurement, and scale used to measure poverty. Assumption imbedded in SSI benefit formula drives lower prevalence of poverty among NMCs as compared with married couples. Poverty is more prevalent in individuals who do not live with another SSI recipient than NCMs or married couples. Individual SSI recipients living alone have high prevalence of poverty. Poverty is reduced among recipients living with nonrecipients because of total income received by household.

Economies of scale result from family or household size, marital status, and other factors. In measuring effects of SSI program rules on poverty among SSI recipients, it is appropriate to use either federal or three-parameter poverty yardstick.