Now that the labor force participation rate is at its lowest level since 1981, it’s a good time to take another look at how the rising number of disabled Americans affects the official size of the workforce. Here are disturbing facts from Bloomberg:
– The number of workers receiving Social Security Disability Insurance jumped 22 percent to 8.7 million in April from 7.1 million in December 2007, Social Security data show.
– That helps explain as much as one quarter of the decline in the U.S. labor-force participation rate during the period, according to economists at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley.
– Disability recipients may account for as much as 0.5 percentage point of the more than 2 point drop since the end of 2007, the economists calculate, and that contribution could grow when some extended unemployment benefits expire at the end of this year.
– More than 99 percent of all SSDI beneficiaries remain in the program until retirement age, David Greenlaw, a managing director in New York at Morgan Stanley, wrote in a March research note, citing government data. The program provides an average of $1,111 in monthly income to eligible workers with a physical or mental impairment that will last at least 12 months or result in death, according to Social Security.
– The number of people collecting disability surged as the economy contracted, with the share of the U.S. population between the ages of 25 and 64 on SSDI climbing to a record-high 5.3 percent in March from 4.5 percent in 2007. Applications per 1,000 working-age people rose to 18 last year from 8 in 1990.
– The program spent $132 billion last year, more than twice as much as in 2000. Once the trust fund dries up, the program’s incoming revenue will be enough to cover only about 80 percent of scheduled benefits, the trustees said.
So more people are disabled and can’t work even as a) the overall health of Americans improves, and b) fewer and fewer jobs require a great deal of physical exertion?
Economists David Autor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and Mark Duggan at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in Philadelphia says SSDI “appears in practice to function like a nonemployability insurance program for a subset of beneficiaries. Also, less-stringent screening procedures, more attractive benefits and a waning need for less-skilled workers have bolstered SSDI rolls, they said. In addition, “difficult-to-verify disorders,” including muscle pain and mental illness, more easily qualify for SSDI under program reforms, Autor wrote in a 2011 paper.
Hmmmm …
Many factors are involved in the increase in workers receiving disability. The Baby Boomers are reaching their disability prone years.Due to improvements in medical care, many people now survive injuries and illnesses that would have been fatal only a few years ago, but that nevertheless leave them disabled.
It is important not to lose sight of the critical role the disability program plays in the lives of millions of Americans who have worked hard all of their lives and now find themselves unable to work through no fault of their own. It is difficult to prove disability and the process involves a lot of delay. People who are not truly disabled rarely make it onto the disability rolls. If they did not recieve a small monthly cash benefit and access to medical care, the cost to our society would be even greater.
John R. Heard, member of the National Organization of Social Security Claimant’s representatives.
One wonders if some activist community organizers are helping this enrollment surge a la
Cloward and
piven
SSDI income is only part of the picture. If you are on disability you are eligible for many other services as well. Moreover, by pooling these benefits, it’s possible to live quite comfortably without ever entering the workforce.
For example: grandmom (45) on SSDI, also eligible for Medicaid, food stamps, housing assistance, home heating assistance, transportation assistance, mom (30), new mom (15), baby (2 months), also eligible for all benefits except SSDI, plus new mom and baby get WIC. In addition, there are programs to provide in-home nursing and other care, tutoring, cell phones, electricity, clothing, baby products and equipment, as well as many soup kitchens for extra food. There is probably more I don’t know about, but these matriarchal setups exist in most cities and perhaps in certain rural areas as well.
All of these benefit programs are now strained. There is no longer any stigma attached to not working. In fact, in some circles, working is denigrated and those who manipulate the system to avoid it are lauded.
With so much discussion about the potential insolvency of Social Security swirling around new outlets recently, now may be a better time than ever to apply for Social Security Disability Insurance or Supplemental Security Income. If you can prove that you are truly disabled and unable to work, I would recommend using http://www.socialsecurity-disability.org to get connected with a specialized SSDI/SSI attorney in your area today to help you with your case.
I would be very interested to see a graph showing the number of NEW applicants each year over the last 10 years and the average time it took for that year’s new applicants to receive their SSDI grant. Can you point to a source for this info? thank you.
“So more people are disabled and can’t work even as a) the overall health of Americans improves, and b) fewer and fewer jobs require a great deal of physical exertion?”
While fewer jobs are in fact taking a great deal of physical exertion, the overall health of Americans is barely improving, at least, compared to other developed countries.
We’re spending far more on health care than countries like Sweden, Germany, and Poland, with far, FAR worse results.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Total_health_expenditure_per_capita,_US_Dollars_PPP.png
The reason? Our health care industry is for-profit and not for health.
The solution would be to enact a universal health care program, compelling insurers and hospitals to cut costs for services, raise quality, and improve outcomes. This would obviously save billions as well.
http://www.pnhp.org/facts/single-payer-resources
Imagine what we could do to save money, freeing up capital for other industries, if we enacted Medicare-for-all in America. Imagine what this could do for those with disabilities.
In 2010 a book was published that seems to have been overlooked by those that are at a loss to explain the huge increase over the past 50 plus years of the number of people collecting SSDI who have debilitating mental illness. I am one of those people…
The book is entitled Anatomy of an Epidemic authored by Robert Whitaker and his website is listed here:
http://robertwhitaker.org/robertwhitaker.org/Anatomy%20of%20an%20Epidemic.html
It is nearly 400 pages and is very readable by those without a medical background and does not get bogged-down in statistics. It is very well annotated.
I have an AS degree in Medical Laboratory Technology so I am not uninformed when it comes to the Medical Community, policies and practices and also I worked at the General Clinical Research Center (GCRC) at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in NYC performing assays on blood and urine samples on patients who had volunteered for drug trials. Despite my modest degree and owing to my professional and personal experiences I believe that the root cause of the enormous increase in the rise of mental illness in this country is caused by the pharmaceutical industry as explained in Anatomy of an Epidemic.
I know how clinical trial data can often be “manipulated” in a way that is not technically illegal, may not be ethical. In short: The pressure to approve a new drug, including those with questionable efficacy, far exceeds the inclination to disapprove. The Food and Drug Administration is funded not by taxes but principally by the pharmaceutical companies.
As an example I will use the second most prescribed class of medications in the United States. Antidepressants: “The FDA approved Prozac in 1987, and over the next two decades the number of disabled mentally ill on the SSI and SSDI rolls soared to 3.97 million. In 2007, the disability rate was 1 in 76 Americans. That’s more than double the rate (my emphasis) in 1987 and six times the rate in 1955.” [Page 7 – Anatomy of an Epidemic. You should read the book because the race for the magic bullet rivaled a machine gun for psychotropic drugs.
Antidepressants ruined my career, countless relationships (friends, siblings and ex-wife), resulted in many hospitalizations and arrests for crimes resulting from aggressive behavior. I’m lucky. Many people are in prison today because of a medical practitioner’s irresponsible prescribing of psychoactive medications without proper assessment and follow up.
I worked since I was 12 years old, put myself through college and had a successful career up until 1994 when a General Practitioner prescribed Zoloft for mild depression. This was about a year after the FDA approval of the medication and my first experience with an SSRI or any other antidepressant. Within two weeks I was a changed man. I felt so much better – even the doctor recognized the “improvement” so she increased the dosage. “Don’t ever go off of this medication”, she admonished me. Unfortunately I didn’t until it was too late. Due to her lack of experience she did not recognize all the signs and symptoms of full blown delusional mania I was exhibiting. I worked for another 15 years. Odd jobs mostly, and finally driving tractor trailers – a job I was less likely to be fired from owing to my odd behavior. Four years ago I went on disability because I could not keep even the most menial job. I am now 59 years old and did not want to go on disability but doctor after doctor kept pushing me to apply so I finally relented. This is one big reason for so many of us being on disability.