Older applicants who are denied Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits struggle in the labor market afterward, new research confirms, providing further evidence that SSDI’s standards are stringent.
By law, SSDI requires that beneficiaries have a severe, well-documented medical impairment that not only prevents them from doing their old job but from doing any job — regardless of whether that work exists in their area, or whether they’d be hired to do it.
The researchers, Mathematica’s Jody Schimmel Hyde and April Wu, tracked people who were rejected at the initial level (their state’s Disability Determination Service, or DDS). Everybody in their sample was 50 or older (the average age was 59), had worked enough to be insured for SSDI, and, as required by law to qualify for benefits, had already waited at least five months after the onset of their disability.
States awarded SSDI to about half the people in the sample. Although most of the denied applicants worked five years before applying, very few worked five years after, Schimmel Hyde and Wu found.
Employment rates fell most steeply for rejected applicants who came closest to qualifying: those deemed by their state’s DDS to be too severely impaired to do their past work, but capable of switching to other work. Few did. (See graph.)
Over half of rejected applicants went on to get Social Security (disability or retirement) benefits before their full retirement age (65 or 66 for this sample) — either by successfully appealing their denial, filing a new disability application, or choosing early retirement with reduced benefits, the authors also found.
The new study adds to a body of research that has found dim labor-market and economic outcomes for denied SSDI applicants. A pioneering 1989 Government Accountability Office study documented that people denied SSDI benefits in the harsh Reagan-era crackdown seldom worked again, suffered steep earnings declines if they did work, and had high poverty rates.
More recently, studies published in 2011 and 2015, which we summarized here, found large drops in work and earnings among rejected SSDI applicants. (Furthermore, those studies excluded many people who appealed their denial or who later reapplied, so those who remained were probably more able — and more likely to work — than the broader group that Schimmel Hyde and Wu studied.)
In short, many denied applicants suffer great economic harm from their disability but nevertheless don’t qualify for benefits. Indeed, the United States has some of the most stringent eligibility criteria for disability benefits among advanced economies, and it spends less than most. SSDI cushions but hardly eliminates the losses that breadwinners face when they suffer a severe impairment.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.