Abstract
This book examines how the Social Security Administration determines eligibility for disability benefits based on ability to make work adjustments to jobs in the economy. It examines program history and the agency’s complex adjudicatory processes, as well as the federal judicial framework, through analysis of the SSA’s use of the administrative notice doctrine and vocational expert testimony, including its development and use of unique “grid” regulations with predetermined medical-vocational conclusions and rules upon which to base work adjustment assessments. It explores why that system is broken and based on antiquated assumptions and obsolete empiricism and taxonomies. It examines transformation from a goods-producing to a service-providing economy and other significant labor market changes since inception, such as automation, globalization, and robotics, which have constricted the low-skill job market that SSA disability claimants typically encounter. It challenges the former SSA Deputy Disability Policy Commissioner’s proposal to eliminate vocational factors in work adjustment assessments and use only medical factors, which would have the greatest deleterious impact on Black, Latinx, and the lowest-income claimants, who often lack access to quality health care and regular medical treatment. It further challenges assumptions animating pursuit of more restrictive disability standards, including: trust fund insolvency; disability prevalence; standard leniency, including in global comparisons; fraud; and adjudicators’ claimant-favorable impartiality against the agency—as opposed to claimant-hostile and racially disparate decision-making. After evaluating restrictive proposals such as a revived Reagan administration proposal and proposals influenced by the 1996 welfare reform legislation’s “work first” model, as well as an inclusive one to adopt a European-style occupational standard, the books concludes with recommendations to fix the current process.
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