Economists: How to slow the growth in disability claims

How bad? How come? Social Security Administration records show that SSDI rolls are steadily rising - from 1.2 million disabled workers collecting cash benefits in 1967, to 8.8 million in 2012. Since 2009 the program has been paying out more in annual benefits than it receives in taxes and interest from its trust fund. Based on current growth, the SSDI program is projected to be insolvent by 2016. Population factors, including the aging-and-ailing baby-boom bulge in the American workforce, have something to do with this increase in disability insurance claimants, as did the Great Recession, the economists note. But these factors only explain part of the growth. The rest, the economists say, is policy driven. Battered by years of policy-driven growth and going broke, probably by 2016, America's Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program could be stabilized with reforms European countries implemented in a similar situation a decade ago, according to an international team of economic analysts, including one at Cornell.