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Chana Joffe-Walt at NPR reports on the alarming increase in disability payments by the Feds. The average monthly Social Security disability payment to a disabled worker is approximately $1,100 in 2012. For a disabled worker with a spouse and one child, SSA states that the average is approximately $1,900 per month. And, much of this is not taxable.
In the past three decades, the number of Americans who are on disability has skyrocketed. The rise has come even as medical advances have allowed many more people to remain on the job, and new laws have banned workplace discrimination against the disabled. Every month, 14 million people now get a disability check from the government.
The federal government spends more money each year on cash payments for disabled former workers than it spends on food stamps and welfare combined. Yet people relying on disability payments are often overlooked in discussions of the social safety net. People on federal disability do not work. Yet because they are not technically part of the labor force, they are not counted among the unemployed.
In other words, people on disability don’t show up in any of the places we usually look to see how the economy is doing. But the story of these programs — who goes on them, and why, and what happens after that — is, to a large extent, the story of the U.S. economy. It’s the story not only of an aging workforce, but also of a hidden, increasingly expensive safety net.
For the past six months, I’ve been reporting on the growth of federal disability programs. I’ve been trying to understand what disability means for American workers, and, more broadly, what it means for poor people in America nearly 20 years after we ended welfare as we knew it. Here’s what I found. …
… In Hale County, Alabama, 1 in 4 working-age adults is on disability. On the day government checks come in every month, banks stay open late, Main Street fills up with cars, and anybody looking to unload an old TV or armchair has a yard sale.
Sonny Ryan, a retired judge in town, didn’t hear disability cases in his courtroom. But the subject came up often. He described one exchange he had with a man who was on disability but looked healthy.
“Just out of curiosity, what is your disability?” the judge asked from the bench.
“I have high blood pressure,” the man said.
“So do I,” the judge said. “What else?”
“I have diabetes.”
“So do I.”There’s no diagnosis called disability. You don’t go to the doctor and the doctor says, “We’ve run the tests and it looks like you have disability.” It’s squishy enough that you can end up with one person with high blood pressure who is labeled disabled and another who is not. …
… As I got further into this story, I started hearing about another group of people on disability: kids. People in HaleCounty told me that what you want is a kid who can “pull a check.” Many people mentioned this, but I basically ignored it. It seemed like one of those things that maybe happened once or twice, got written up in the paper and became conversational fact among neighbors.
Then I looked at the numbers. I found that the number of kids on a program called Supplemental Security Income — a program for children and adults who are both poor and disabled — is almost seven times larger than it was 30 years ago. …
Michael Barone posts his initial reaction to the NPR story. He seems a bit naive to Pickerhead.
Ballooning federal Disability Insurance payments were the subject of my December 2 Washington Examiner column. I drew on my American Enterprise Institute colleague Nicholas Eberstad’s book A Nation of Takers: America’s Entitlement Epidemic and pointed out that between 1996 and 2011, when the nation gained 8.8 million private sector jobs, the disability rolls grew by 4.1, to a total of 8.6 million, 5.6% of the 18-to-64 population.
That’s hugely expensive. “But,” I added, “there is also a human cost. Consider the plight of someone who at some level knows he can work but decides to collect disability payments instead. That person is not likely to ever seek work again, especially if the sluggish recovery turns out to be the new normal.
“He may be gleeful that he was able to game the system or just grimly determined to get what he can in a tough situation. But he will not be able to get the satisfaction of earned success from honest work that contributes something to society and the economy.” …
The Atlantic has more; calling it the country’s $124 billion secret welfare program.
Imagine for a moment that Congress woke up one morning, realized that the United States was suffering from a paralyzing long-term unemployment crisis, and, in a moment of progressive pique, decided to create a welfare program aimed at middle-aged, blue-collar workers.
The one thing everybody could probably agree on is that it should help all those jobless 50-somethings find employment, right?
Well, as NPR’s Planet Money argues in an eye-opening story, it turns out there already is a “de facto welfare program” for those struggling Americans. The problem is, instead of getting the unemployed back on their feet, it pays them to give up work for good.
I’m talking about 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. Since the early 1990s, the number of former workers receiving payments under it has more than doubled to about 8.5 million, as shown in Planet Money’s graph below. More than five percent of all eligible adults are now on the rolls, up from around 3 percent twenty years ago. Add in children and spouses who also get checks, and the grand tally comes to 11.7 million.
Reihan Salam posts in National Review about the Dutch experience trying to back down their disability program.
… The Dutch reforms, taken together, appear to have had a significant impact on inflows into disability, but a much smaller impact on outflows:
“Experience rating has reduced inflow into the WAO scheme by 13 percentage points, the introduction of the gatekeeper protocol has reduced inflow by 25 percentage points and the tightening of the eligibility criteria has further reduced inflow by 4 percentage points. The additional effect of the WIA is large as well, resulting in a decrease of inflow by 21 percentage points. Interestingly, whereas the effect of the gatekeeper protocol seems to increase over time, the effect of the WIA is decreasing over time.
All these effective policy measures have one thing in common: they focus on preventing inflow. Indeed, prevention is the best way in the long run of keeping claimant numbers low. Only the re‐examinations of the disability stock from 2004 to 2009 caused a significant increase in disability outflow. However, at the same time the re‐examinations boosted outflow, the recovery rates of the population not affected by the re‐examinations decreased sharply, possibly due to the change in the re‐examination periodicity.”
This makes intuitive sense, as increasing outflows will entail disruption and considerably more political resistance, which makes reducing inflows all the more important.
How about some better news? Tomorrow night at 10:00 little Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU) will play against the Florida Gators for a chance to advance in the NCAA Men’s Tournament. Sports Illustrated has the story of the school that came from nowhere.
DUNK CITY, Fla. — Florida Gulf Coast coach Dave Tollett fired up his computer the morning after the Eagles became the first No. 15 seed to reach the Sweet 16 in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. Page after page of unopened e-mails greeted him.
“Four hundred eighty-nine,” Tollett said, smiling.
That might not seem so unusual, except that Tollett coaches FGCU’s baseball team. The bulk of those e-mails came from high school players or their parents. Across the nation, they had watched on television as the Eagles dunked their way to wins against Georgetown and San DiegoState. They had seen the photos of FGCU students marching from their dorms for an impromptu beach party. Less than three days since the basketball team from a relatively anonymous directional school in southwest Florida took the court against Georgetown in Philadelphia, seemingly everyone wanted to play in that magical place known as Dunk City — regardless of sport. “In 72 hours,” Tollett said, “the university has changed.” …
… Awareness is precisely why former FGCU president William Merwin wanted to start an athletic program. The school opened in 1997 and served primarily as a distance learning center. As the century turned, Merwin decided to change that. He wanted FGCU to give students a more traditional college experience. He wanted a robust campus life. He wanted a Greek system. He wanted sports teams. One of the first athletic department hires was Butch Perchan, the senior associate athletics director for external affairs. Perchan had come from Southern Colorado to live in the warmth of the SunshineState. He got the full Florida experience. The athletic department was housed in trailers as the school worked to clear the surrounding swampland to make it suitable for facilities. “Three beautiful trailers,” Perchan joked. Kavanagh, who wouldn’t arrive in Fort Myers until 2009, isn’t sure he could have handled the pioneer life Perchan enjoyed so much. “Snakes were being moved,” Kavanagh said, “so they could create something.” One of Perchan’s first hires was Tollett, who received $3,500 for the first year he spent recruiting a team.
FGCU’s teams began play in the 2002-03 school year in the NAIA. They moved quickly to NCAA Division II, then reclassified to Division I. One major donor was Ben Hill Griffin III, who has a street named for him on one side of campus and whose agribusiness company’s name is on the arena. It was Griffin’s company that donated all the land on which the university sits. If that name sounds familiar even to sports fans who aren’t familiar with the citrus industry, it’s because Griffin’s father, Ben Hill Griffin Jr., donated so generously to the University of Florida that the school named the football stadium after him. (Ben Hill Griffin III also remains an active donor at Florida.) Another major FGCU donor was the late Duane Swanson, who owned a large building supply company. Swanson befriended Tollett and became one of the program’s biggest benefactors. Once, Swanson became so irked that he couldn’t buy a hot dog during FGCU baseball games that Tollett convinced him to fund the construction of a concession stand. Feeling bold, Tollett then suggested the project should also include a baseball locker room, baseball clubhouse and an office building for the baseball, softball and soccer coaches. Swanson funded all of it. “He’d shed tears over this,” Perchan said of the Sweet 16 run.
Last year was the first for the men’s basketball team as a full member of the NCAA’s Division I. But it is a vast gulf between FGCU’s end of Division I and the one occupied by the Eagles’ Sweet 16 opponent. While FGCU and Florida are considered equals in NCAA Division I legislative matters, the Eagles bear no financial resemblance to the balance-sheet juggernaut from Gainesville they’ll see Friday. …
The Naples Daily News with background for the FGCU story.
By now, Andy Enfield’s business acumen has been well documented.
Since the Florida Gulf Coast University men’s basketball team dunked its way into the national spotlight, the coach’s eclectic and successful background has captivated the media. Enfield has an MBA, worked on Wall Street, retains a small stake in a company worth more than $100 million and previously started multiple businesses.
Enfield has been tabbed by some as the most interesting man in the NCAA tournament for his past as a businessman. Yet most his success in the basketball world has come as a salesman.
When he took the Eagles head coaching job two years ago, Enfield had to sell players on a team that suffered through four straight losing seasons. He had to get high school kids to come to a school they had never heard of before.
It turns out, for Enfield, it wasn’t as hard as it sounds.
“He didn’t really have to sell the program,” FGCU sophomore point guard Brett Comer said. “He sold himself to me.”
Whatever he said worked. He brought in enough talent and improved the existing Eagles enough to compete with the major college basketball programs in the country. As a result, FGCU is the first No. 15 seed to advance to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament.
While Enfield had never been a head coach, and FGCU had never had a winning season in Division I, he had no problem getting the players he wanted. Recruits were drawn to Enfield not because of his coaching style or system, but because of his penchant for making players better.
Enfield’s coaching experience involved working in player development in the NBA. He was a shooting and development consultant for several teams and dozens of professional players. Knowing they could take their game to the next level, high school recruits were drawn to Enfield. …