Washington Post Calculation of Disability in America

Lee Ann Torrans Disability Attorney McKinney Texas

Recently The Washington Post calculated the disability prevalence rate among the working-age population at the county level. The SSA publishes county recipients of SSI, SSDI disability and SSDI for disabled adult children. The SSA also publishes county-level counts of people receiving support under SSI and SSDI. Those figures were subtracted to avoid double-counting. The rate was created with the county working-age population.

Data on Disability Recipients

Between 1996 and 2015, the number of working-age adults receiving disability climbed from 7.7 million to 13 million. The federal government this year will spend an estimated $192 billion on disability payments, more than the combined total for food stamps, welfare, housing subsidies and unemployment assistance.

There are 13 million working-age Americans — ages 18 and 64 — receiving disability payments. This number includes every working-age person who receives benefits through the Supplemental Security Income, Social Security Disability Insurance programs or both. The Social Security Administration publishes those numbers for the nation for each year going back to 1996. A rate was calculated using the nation’s age 18 to 64 resident population by year.

The Post classified counties from urban to rural using qualifications defined by the Center for Disease Control National Center for Health Statistics six-step scale. Counties were grouped into three sets to divide metros areas of at least 1 million people, smaller metros and non-metro areas.

Spending figures were taken from the proposed 2017 federal budget. Social Security disability insurance ($149 billion) was combined with Supplemental Security Income for people with disabilities ($43 billion). The spending does not include money spent by states to supplement the programs.

Census American Community Survey five-year data was used for county-level demographics.

Rural America experienced the most rapid increase in disability rates over the past decade, the analysis found, amid broad growth in disability that was partly driven by demographic changes that are now slowing as disabled baby-boomers age into retirement.

The increases have been worse in working-class areas, worse still in communities where residents are older, and worst of all in places with shrinking populations and few immigrants.

All but three of the 136 counties with the highest rates – where more than one in six working-age adults receive disability – were rural, the analysis found, although the vast majority of people on disability live in cities and suburbs.

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