Posted on 06/20/2018 6:38:58 AM PDT by reaganaut1
The number of Americans seeking Social Security disability benefits is plunging, a startling reversal of a decades-old trend that threatened the program’s solvency. It is the latest evidence of a stronger economy pulling people back into the job market or preventing workers from being sidelined in the first place.
The drop is so significant that the agency has revised its estimates of how long the program will continue to be financially secure. This month, the government announced that the program would not run out of money until 2032, four years later than its previous estimate last year. Two years ago, the government had warned that the funds might be depleted by 2023.
In addition to stronger economic growth, the drop reflects newly tightened standards for eligibility and the increasing number of baby boomers who are leaving the program because they have become eligible for Social Security retirement benefits and Medicare.
Fewer than 1.5 million Americans applied to the Social Security Administration for disability coverage last year, the lowest since 2002. Applications are running at an even lower rate this year, government officials say.
All told, 8.63 million workers received disability benefits in May, down from a peak of 8.96 million in September 2014. A drop of several hundred thousand may not sound like much. But it is a sharp turnaround from what seemed to be an inexorable rise, in which the disability rolls more than doubled over the past 25 years. That increase led some conservative lawmakers to criticize the program as wasteful and riddled with fraud.
The Social Security Administration expected the number of applicants to decline after the recession when the total number of beneficiaries topped out, but even government number crunchers were caught off guard by the steepness and duration of the fall.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
And this trend lends support to their criticism. How "disabled" is a disability benefits recipient if an improving job marked induces him to seek work rather than be on the dole?
Yes, making it easy to claim disability in order to hide how bad the unemployment problem is has long been a practice in Europe. Obama imported it here. Ergo labor participation rate could decline dramatically as it did, yet Obama could claim the “unemployment rate” was “only” 5-6 percent. Of course we all knew the real rate was much higher.
Cause = Effect
Gee... Who knew!
Such good news. Most people want to work to keep busy.
Duh. Everyone but the dim bulb Dems at the NYT knew that people were abusing the SS disability program during the Obama Depression.
All that does is just switch the "recipient" to another tax payer wealth redistribution.
Women and minorities hardest hit!
Might be the medical care. If the only way to get care and survive is to go on disability that is what they have to do. Now they can afford the care and can still eat.
Rush likes to call this “a random act of journalism.”
Look for Nelson soon to be unemployed. And collecting disability benefits.
I mostly agree with your comment, but I don’t think 0bama’s motivation was to skew the unemployment rate, as much as it was to increase the numbers of those who would perpetually vote Democratic. JMHO
That may well have been part of it too.
I would prefer that everyone getting ANY KIND of state or Federal benefits would have to re-qualify EVERY single year.
I would prefer that everyone getting ANY KIND of state or Federal benefits would have to re-qualify EVERY single year.
YES!!!
I have to file a tax form, that details how much I must pay in taxes to FUND these benefits, annually, so they should have to re-qualify, annually.
Only fair.
Obama initiated a similar policy here, covertly, by directing SS to liberalize the requirements for disability and grant money more freely. During many months there were more people who went on disability than who were counted as newly unemployed. That's how it works.
Great post. And don’t forget under Obama, lack of English classifed as ‘disability’ also —
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/04/07/feds-consider-puerto-ricans-disabled-because-speak-spanish.html
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