Nov 20, 2013

The Growth In The Number Of People Receiving Disability Benefits Is Almost All Demographics

     The abstract of a study by Social Security's Office of Retirement and Disability Policy:
We find that three factors—(1) population growth, (2) the growth in the proportion of women insured for disability, and (3) the movement of the large baby boom generation into disability-prone ages—explain 90 percent of the growth in new disabled-worker entitlements over the 36-year subperiod (1972–2008). The remaining 10 percent is the part attributable to the disability “incidence rate.” Looking at the two subperiods (1972–1990 and 1990–2008), unadjusted measures appear to show faster growth in the incidence rate in the later period than in the earlier one. This apparent speedup disappears once we account for the changing demographic structure of the insured population. Although the adjusted growth in the incidence rate accounts for 17 percent of the growth in disability entitlements in the earlier subperiod, it accounts for only 6 percent of the growth in the more recent half. Demographic factors explain the remaining 94 percent of growth over the 1990–2008 period.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

And the rest of it is the recent Soft Depression that has only been partially ameliorated by the Fed/Congress/President.

Anonymous said...

Charles,

Quit being intellectually dishonest. What is the notion you have repeatedly been trying to counter with your continued reports related to wide-scale demographic changes (boomers aging) accounting for increased disability apps/pays? That the bad economy is a large (main?) cause of the increased apps.

Let's look at what you just posted here. Your data indicates that about 90 percent of the increase in benefit receipt is attributable to all the things you want increases to be attributable to--more women in the workforce, population growth, and all those boomers hitting their "disability prone" years (without any mention of how the grid rules can be really, really favorable to actually retired for non medical reasons folks 50 and older...). But there's a problem.

Remind me when that data stops? Oh yeah, 2008. Just before the economic crapola hit the fan.

How are you gonna use data that stops just before the Great Recession existed to prove that things other than the Great Recession (i.e. people can't find work so they apply for disability) caused recent increases in applications/recipients?

Ok, sure, the data shows that before the economy went off a cliff (and many of us posit nondisabled folks began applying for disability in great numbers due to desperation) the rise in apps and receipts was almost entirely due to your preferred factors.

Get back to me when you've got data that actually takes the Great Recession into account.