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Social Security's disability insurance program, which over 20 years has quietly morphed into one of the largest, yet least talked about, pieces of the social safety net.
More than 5% of all eligible adults are now on the rolls, up from around 3% twenty years ago. Add in children and spouses who also get checks, and the grand tally comes to 11.7 million.
The workforce is getting older, and thus more ailment prone. But Americans over 50, who make up most disability cases, report much better health today than in the 1980s. And demographers have found that the percentage of Americans older than 65 suffering from a chronic disability has fallen drastically since then.
Two things happened: Qualifying for disability got easier, and finding work got harder. Just as the bar for disability fell, the economy turned. Factories laid off their assembly workers. The service sector picked up the slack. Wages stagnated for anyone without a college diploma. These changes have made disability more attractive for reasons both obvious and subtle. Although program's payments are small -- the average benefit is a bit over $1,000 per month
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