LTDI

In addition, the LTDI and SSDI replacement rates (i.e., the proportion of a person's former earnings that is replaced by a program's benefits) differ.

In cases of an overlap in LTDI and SSDI eligibility, LTDI insurers have a strong incentive to help their claimants apply for SSDI benefits.

Three recent policy proposals expressed interest in expanding the role of LTDI with a goal of reducing SSDI dependency, although the parameters for how to do so differ among the proposals.

In this section, we describe the NCS data, our approach to characterizing the types of workers who had access to LTDI in 2013, the cost to employers for providing this coverage, and trends in both access rates and plan characteristics.

Starting in 2003, the NCS data began to include a yearly calculation in March on the percentage of workers in the job who have access to an LTDI plan (the access rate), the percentage of workers in the job who participate in such a plan (the participation rate), and the percentage of workers in the job with access to LTDI who participate in the plan (the takeup rate).

In the first column of table 1, we present a replication of LTDI access and takeup rate findings from selected tables in the BLS publication using raw data from the 2013 NCS.