The unprecedented growth in the younger disability-transfer population is counter to the goal of integrating working-age people with disabilities into mainstream employment. The onset of a disability need not result in a swift and inevitable movement onto the disability rolls for most people, and work-based policies in the spirit of the Americans with Disabilities Act can importantly increase employment. But until both the disability community and public policymakers take the risk of shifting from a disability policy primarily based on transfers to one based on the proposition that people with disabilities can and should be expected to work, young people with disabilities can look forward to a life of dependency.
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References
1.
1. For a discussion of this period of disability policy history, see Richard V. Burkhauser and Robert H. Haveman, Disability and Work: The Economics of American Policy (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982).
2.
2. For a fuller discussion of disability policy during the 1980s and 1990s in the four countries in Table 1, see Leo J. M. Aarts, Richard V. Burkhauser, and Philip P. de Jong, eds., Curing the Dutch Disease: An International Perspective on Disability Policy Reform (Aldershot, England: Avebury, 1996).
3.
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4. For a fuller discussion, see Stapleton and Livermore, “Impairment Trends in Application and Awards.”
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5. Department of Health and Human Services, Social Security Administration, Annual Statistical Supplement (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, various years).
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6. Saad Nagi, “Disability Concepts Revisited: Implications to Prevention,” in Disability in America: Toward a National Agenda for Prevention, ed. A. M. Pope and A. R. Tarlove (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1991), app. A.
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7. The discussion in this section of the article is based on a compilation of tables from Burkhauser and Daly based on multiyear data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. See Richard V. Burkhauser and Mary C. Daly, “Employment and Economic Well-Being Following the Onset of a Disability: The Role for Public Policy,” in Disability, Work, and Cash Benefits, ed. Jerry Mashawet al. (Kalamazoo, MI: W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 1996).
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8. Department of Health and Human Services, Annual Statistical Supplement, 1995.
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9. Work by Hoynes and Moffitt suggests that changes in the effective tax on work for those currently receiving SSDI or SSI are unlikely to have much influence on their decision to leave the rolls. Hillary W. Hoynes and Robert Moffitt, “The Effectiveness of Financial Work Incentives in DI and SSI: Lessons from Other Transfer Programs,” in Disability, Work, and Cash Benefits, ed. Mashawet al.
10.
10. The growing population of children with disabilities on the SSI rolls experienced the onset of their disability prior to their entry into the workforce. But Burkhauser and Daly show that the vast majority of people with disabilities were adults and employed at the time of their disability onset. See Burkhauser and Daly, “Employment and Economic Well-Being.”
11.
11. See Richard V. Burkhauser, J. S. Butler, and Yang Woo Kim, “The Importance of Employer Accommodation on the Job Duration of Workers with Disabilities: A Hazard Model Approach,”Labour Economics, 3(1):1-22 (1995).
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12. Burkhauser and Daly, “Employment and Economic Well-Being.”
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13. For a review of the literature on accommodation prior to the passage of the ADA, see Thomas N. Chirikos, “The Economics of Employment (Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act),”Milbank Quarterly, 69 (supps. 1 and 2):150-179 (1991).
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14. Jerry L. Mashawet al., eds., Balancing Security and Opportunity: The Challenge of Disability Income Policy (Washington, DC: National Academy of Social Insurance, 1996).
