From NPR:
In the past three decades, the number of Americans who are on disability has skyrocketed. The rise has come even as medical advances have allowed many more people to remain on the job, and new laws have banned workplace discrimination against the disabled. Every month, 14 million people now get a disability check from the government.
The federal government spends more money each year on cash payments for disabled former workers than it spends on food stamps and welfare combined. Yet people relying on disability payments are often overlooked in discussions of the social safety net. People on federal disability do not work. Yet because they are not technically part of the labor force, they are not counted among the unemployed.
In other words, people on disability don't show up in any of the places we usually look to see how the economy is doing. But the story of these programs -- who goes on them, and why, and what happens after that -- is, to a large extent, the story of the U.S. economy. It's the story not only of an aging workforce, but also of a hidden, increasingly expensive safety net.HT: Marginal Revolution, where despite a million possible points to raise, in this instance the comments all seem to follow the first commenter as hounds follow the fox.
For the past six months, I've been reporting on the growth of federal disability programs. I've been trying to understand what disability means for American workers, and, more broadly, what it means for poor people in America nearly 20 years after we ended welfare as we knew it. Here's what I found.
Hale County, Alabama
In Hale County, Alabama, 1 in 4 working-age adults is on disability. On the day government checks come in every month, banks stay open late, Main Street fills up with cars, and anybody looking to unload an old TV or armchair has a yard sale.
Sonny Ryan, a retired judge in town, didn't hear disability cases in his courtroom. But the subject came up often. He described one exchange he had with a man who was on disability but looked healthy.
"Just out of curiosity, what is your disability?" the judge asked from the bench.
"I have high blood pressure," the man said.
"So do I," the judge said. "What else?"
"I have diabetes."
"So do I."
There's no diagnosis called disability. You don't go to the doctor and the doctor says, "We've run the tests and it looks like you have disability." It's squishy enough that you can end up with one person with high blood pressure who is labeled disabled and another who is not....MUCH MORE
Previously:
Geographic Areas to Short When the Debt Bomb Goes Off
A bit of hyperbole in the headline. It's not a bomb and besides, the problem will be the interest rather than the debt per se.Jobless Disability Claims soar to record $200B as of January"
I'm not sure how to use this but thank the New York Times for putting together this interactive map of the counties most dependent on Federal transfer payments,
What I'd really like to see is a list of the counties with the highest levels of Social Security Disability fraud, this is a program ripe for reform.
As Robert Samuelson wrote for the Washington post...
"TrimTabs on Debt and Disability Claims: How Much Debt Does it Take to Generate $1 in GDP? Disability Fraud vs. Expiring Unemployment Benefits Revisited"
The Real Problem With Social Security Disability: The DI Trust Fund Will Be Exhausted in Four Years
Phi Scamma Jamma: More People Went on Disability Last Month Than Got Jobs
Schrödinger's Disability or One More Reason the Social Security Disability Fund Will Run Out by 2016
See also Political Calculations' "Enabling Disability Fraud"
