End Notes
[1] Kathy Ruffing, “Happy Birthday, Social Security Disability Insurance!” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, July 31, 2015, https://www.cbpp.org/blog/happy-birthday-social-security-disability-insurance.
[2] Benefits sometimes go to qualifying family members, chiefly minor children. Because spouses and children collect benefits as “auxiliaries,” it’s usual to focus on the number of so-called “primary,” or disabled-worker, beneficiaries. In 2016, 1 million disabled workers (600,000 men and 400,000 women) had eligible children; see Social Security Administration (SSA), Office of Retirement and Disability Policy, Annual Statistical Report on the Social Security Disability Insurance Program, 2016, https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/di_asr/2016/sect01d.html#table29.
[3] For the relatively few young people who qualify for SSDI by age 31, these work requirements are adjusted — essentially, such applicants must have worked in at least half of the years after they reached age 21.
[4] For more analysis of the modern history of American women’s labor force participation, see Timothy Taylor, “How to Increase Women's Labor Force Participation,” Conversable Economist, October 27, 2017, http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2017/10/increasing-womens-labor-force.html; Taylor, “Women in the US Labor Market,” December 9, 2016, http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2016/12/women-in-us-labor-market.html; and Social Security Advisory Board, “Technical Panel on Labor Force Participation, A Report to the Board, June 2017,” http://ssab.gov/Details-Page/ArticleID/1180/Technical-Panel-on-Labor-Force-Participation-A-Report-to-the-Board-June-2017 (especially Chart Appendix B, with detail by age group).
[5] SSA, Annual Statistical Report, 2016, https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/di_asr/2016/sect03c.html#table39. The median age at award, about 55, is well above the average shown there (about 51), because the average is tugged down by the small number of awards to people in their 20s and 30s.
[6] Based on SSA, Annual Statistical Report, 2016, (https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/di_asr/2016/sect01c.html#table26, and corresponding tables in earlier editions), we calculate that 31 percent of disabled-widow beneficiaries in 2000, 38 percent in 2005, and 52 percent in 2016 also got a disabled-worker benefit, which their widow benefit merely supplemented. We can’t find data before 2000, but the benefit was originally created to help women who were widowed in their 50s and who had previously been homemakers. See Eric Kingson et al., “The Evolution of Social Security Disabled Widow(er)s’ Benefits,” May 2003, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, http://crr.bc.edu/working-papers/the-evolution-of-social-security-disabled-widowers-benefits/; and David A. Weaver, “Widows and Social Security,” Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 70, No. 3, 2010, https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v70n3/v70n3p89.html.
[7] Mordechai E. Lando, “Demographic Characteristics of Disability Applicants: Relationship to Allowances,” Social Security Bulletin, May 1976, https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v39n5/v39n5p15.pdf; Lando et al., 1978 Survey of Disability and Work: Data Book, Social Security Administration, 1982, https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/003003500. Women workers in the 1980s were far less likely than men to be union members, and more likely to work part time and to hold clerical or service jobs. See U.S. Department of Labor, Women in the Labor Force: A Databook, February 2004, https://www.bls.gov/cps/wlf-databook.htm. It’s possible that women’s job characteristics made them less familiar with the program. In fact, recognizing that many people who might qualify for disability benefits simply didn’t know about them, SSA conducted extensive advertising and outreach in the early 1990s. That effort was chiefly aimed at people eligible for SSI, but its impacts spilled over to Title II disability programs as well. Furthermore, in 2000 SSA started sending Social Security Statements to workers showing their potential benefits in the disability as well as retirement programs. Before then, there was no regular, individual communication to working-age people about their prospective benefits.
[8] Mary C. Daly, Brian Lucking, and Jonathan Schwabish, “The Future of Social Security Disability Insurance,” Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Economic Letter, June 24, 2013, http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic-letter/2013/june/future-social-security-disability-insurance-ssdi/.
[9] Kathy Ruffing, “How Much of the Growth in Disability Insurance Stems From Demographic Changes?” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, January 27, 2014, https://www.cbpp.org/research/how-much-of-the-growth-in-disability-insurance-stems-from-demographic-changes.
[10] Historical data on average benefit from https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/ProgData/icp.html; distribution of benefits in December 2017 from https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/ProgData/benefits/da_mbc201712.html.
[11] Paul O’Leary, Elisa Walker, and Emily Roessel, “Social Security Disability Insurance at Age 60: Does It Still Reflect Congress’ Original Intent?” SSA, Issue Paper No. 2015-01 (September 2015), https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/issuepapers/ip2015-01.html. The authors provided CBPP with the gender breakdown for their Chart 1.
[12] Specifically, the averaging period is equal to the number of elapsed years (after age 21 and before onset of disability), with the lowest-earning one-fifth of years dropped. Thus, a 27-year-old applicant may drop one year, a 32-year-old two years, and so forth. At maximum, five years are dropped (for applicants 47 and older). For younger applicants, those so-called “dropout years” under the regular formula may be boosted by up to three child care years in which the worker had zero earnings and a child under age 3. As a practical matter, that provision only helps applicants under age 37. See SSA, Annual Statistical Supplement to the Social Security Bulletin, 2016, https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/supplement/2016/2a8-2a19.html#table2.a10.
[13] Michelle Stegman Bailey and Jeffrey Hemmeter, “Characteristics of Noninstitutionalized DI and SSI Program Participants, 2013 Update,” SSA, Research and Statistics Note No. 2015-02 (September 2015), https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/rsnotes/rsn2015-02.html.
[14] SSA, Annual Statistical Report, 2016, https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/di_asr/2016/sect03c.html#table44, and corresponding table from earlier editions. It’s important to note that these are the primary diagnosis; many SSDI beneficiaries have multiple medical conditions, and mental impairments in particular often coexist with serious physical illness. See, for example, Morbidity and Mortality in People with Serious Mental Illness, National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors, 2006, https://www.nasmhpd.org/content/morbidity-and-mortality-people-serious-mental-illness; Bill Gardner, “The Physical Reality of Mental Illness,” Incidental Economist, May 28, 2013, http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/the-physical-reality-of-mental-illness/; William Frey et al., Mental Health Treatment Study: Final Report, prepared for the Social Security Administration by Westat, July 2011, https://www.ssa.gov/disabilityresearch/documents/MHTS_Final_Report_508.pdf.
[15] Kathy Ruffing, “No Surprise: Disability Beneficiaries Experience High Death Rates,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, April 4, 2013, https://www.cbpp.org/blog/no-surprise-disability-beneficiaries-experience-high-death-rates; updated chart at CBPP, “Chart Book: Social Security Disability Insurance,” updated August 1, 2017, https://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/chart-book-social-security-disability-insurance#Section_three. See also Lakshmi K. Raut, “Exits from the Disability Insurance Rolls: Estimates from a Competing-Risks Model,” Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 77, No. 3, 2017, https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v77n3/v77n3p15.html.