April 07, 2011
The NYT had a good piece that reported on the sharp rise in the number of people getting government disability payments over the last two decades. While this is partly due to the aging of the baby boom cohort into the peak years of disability, some of the increase also reflects changes in the economy.
The piece also points out that the disability portion of the Social Security program is much more poorly funded than the much larger retirement and survivor programs. The projected 75-year shortfall in the disability program is more than 16 percent of its income, where it is just over 10 percent of the income of the larger retirement and survivors program.
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