Drop in Disability Claims Attributed to Economic Improvement
Social Security’s Disability Income (SSDI) trust funds are experiencing a bit of a breather, a development New York Times’ writer Nelson D. Schwartz attributes to the improving U.S. economy. The numbers published by the Social Security Administration show a roughly 4% drop in the number of claimants on the disability roles when compared to the program’s 2014 peak of 8.96 million claimants, reversing an upward trend extending back two and a half decades.
To be fair, not all of the decline in SSDI’s rolls is attributable to economic measurements, as Schwartz points out. Citing “newly tightened standards for eligibility and the increasing number of baby boomers who are leaving the program because they have become eligible for Social Security retirement benefits and Medicare,” he notes that applications for disability benefits in the past year reached the lowest point since 2002. And these developments have led to the recently-released Social Security Trustees Report noting that the program’s Disability Trust Funds are projected to remain solvent–until 2032–four years beyond last year’s projection.
For more information on this matter, check out Schwartz’ post here…