Today, President Obama issued a statement commemorating the 21st anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA). While the Act itself should be celebrated, Americans should be concerned that government programs are failing individuals with disabilities: a lower percentage of Americans with disabilities are working today than in 1990 despite the ADA’s efforts to remove barriers to work.
The cause, in large part, is that policy changes in the federal disability transfer programs, including Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), Supplemental Security Income (SSI)-disabled adults, and SSI-disabled children, are undermining a core goal of the ADA—the full integration of people with disabilities into the workforce. These programs have made work less attractive and less profitable and as a result the share of adults with disabilities on either SSDI or SSI continued to grow, as does the share of poor children with disabilities on SSI-disabled children benefits. In part because of this, the 2011 Social Security Trustees Report on the Status of the Social Security and Medicare Programs notes that the SSDI Trust Fund is projected to be exhausted in 2018, threatening the future welfare of those with disabilities.
Any reform to our disability programs must start with work-first strategies. Encouraging work rather than benefit receipt following the onset of a disability will slow the process that eventually leads to an inability to work and can solve a range of problems currently burdening the disability system. This strategy is consistent with the goals of the ADA, which calls for the integration of people with disabilities into the labor market. A work-oriented approach provides a long-term opportunity for people with disabilities to reap some of the rewards of a growing economy, an opportunity not granted by the current cash benefit system.
Richard Burkhauser and Mary Daly’s book, ‘The Declining Work and Welfare of People with Disabilites,’ will be released by AEI Press in September 2011. You can read an excerpt here.