The Washington Post Published a Misleading Article on SSD Beneficiaries
Posted April 21, 2017 by Premier Disability Services, LLC®
Earlier this month, The Washington Post ran a front-page story about Social Security Disability benefits in rural counties, followed last Sunday by an editorial calling for a wholesale restructuring of the Social Security Disability Insurance program. Not only does the Post’s reporting paint a misleading picture about Social Security disability beneficiaries, but the data analysis they published is just plain wrong. The Post’s central assertion—flanked by an interactive map—was that as many as one-third of working-age adults in rural communities are living on monthly disability checks.
In a sidebar to the article, the Post says they used publicly available county-level data from the Social Security Administration (SSA) to count “every working-age person who receives benefits through the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program or both.” But the Social Security Administration doesn’t publish the data needed for that calculation.
The Center for American Progress tried to replicate their analysis, and listed the following ways in which the Post’s article was wrong:
The analysis over counts working-age people receiving disability benefits by nearly 500,000. The SSA doesn’t publish county-level data on SSDI beneficiaries in the age range the Post defines as “working age” (18 to 64). SSA’s OASDI Beneficiaries by State and County report does provide county-level data on SSDI beneficiaries, including disabled worker beneficiaries. However, of the 8,909,430 disabled worker SSDI beneficiaries whom the table breaks down by county, 472,080—or about 5 percent—are age 65 or older. Including these older disabled workers would inflate the share of working-age people with disabilities.
It also over counts “disabled adult children” by about 750,000. Approximately 1 million SSDI beneficiaries are disabled adult children (DACs)—people whose disability began before age 22 and who are insured for SSDI benefits based on a parent’s work record. Since the Post claims to count working-age people receiving SSDI, SSI, or both, they need to include working-age DACs. But—contrary to the Post’s data sidebar—there are no data available on working-age DACs at the county level.
The same SSA table from above does provide county-level data on one group of “children” receiving SSDI—totaling 1,755,276 in 2015. The problem is, these children aren’t disabled adults—they’re actually the offspring of disabled workers. Most are under age 18, and most are not disabled. Not only does erroneously using this data mean including minors without disabilities, it also inflates the number of DACs by about three-quarters of a million, since the total number of DACs aged 18-64 is 977,776. Moreover, offspring of disabled workers and DACs are likely differently distributed across counties, creating problems in county-level comparisons.
It cannot accurately adjust for double-counting the 1.3 million working-age people who receive both SSDI and SSI (a.k.a. “concurrent beneficiaries”). About 1.3 million working-age Americans receive a small amount in benefits from both SSDI and SSI—generally people with very low incomes and limited resources. To avoid double-counting these individuals, the Post would need county-level figures on concurrent beneficiaries. But SSA doesn’t publish county-level data on working-age concurrent beneficiaries. SSA does provide the number of people receiving both SSI and Social Security benefits of any type, but that figure also includes people receiving any other kind of Social Security benefit (such as survivor or retirement benefits). Furthermore, they also include concurrent beneficiaries who are children and adults 65 and older. Both of these issues make it impossible to calculate for working-age beneficiaries receiving both SSDI and SSI at the county level.
It is missing data for 106 counties. Mostly because of small population size, SSA doesn’t publish county-level data on SSI beneficiaries for 106 counties. This would be problematic for any county-level analysis. But it is especially notable given that the Post’s article focuses on rural counties—as around 97 of the counties with missing data are rural. It is unclear how the Post treats these counties in their analysis.
Misleading media reports can have significant consequences. Just this month, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney once again proposed the idea of cutting the Social Security Disability Insurance program, despite President Trump’s campaign pledge not to cut Social Security. Misleading media reports based on inaccurate data analysis risk giving Mulvaney and others cover to slash critical programs like SSDI.
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By: Joyce Trudeau of Premier Disability Services, LLC®
The Social Security Administration announced the rescission of three previous rulings in the Federal Register on March 27, 2017 – SSR 96-2p: Titles II and XVI: Giving Controlling Weight to Treating Source Medical Opinions; SSR 96-5p: Titles II and XVI: Medical Source Opinions on Issues Reserved to the Commissioner; and SSR 06-3p: Titles II and XVI: Considering Opinions and Other Evidence from Sources Who Are Not “Acceptable Medical Sources” in Disability Claims, Considering Decisions on Disability by Other Governmental and Nongovernmental Agencies. The administration noted that these three SSRs are inconsistent or unnecessarily duplicative with their recent final rules, Revisions to Rules Regarding the Evaluation of Medical Evidence, published in the Federal Register on January 18, 2017 (
