Disability Research and Policy: New Evidence and Promising Ideas

Of the roughly 17.5 million working-age people in the United States living with a disability, nearly 70 percent receive benefits through the Social Security Administration’s disability programs. About 12 percent of all federal spending goes to supporting this population—$357 billion in 2008—and this number continues to increase. But the experience of people within the disability support system is often characterized by fragmented services and poor health and economic outcomes. 

The Disability Research Consortium (DRC), a collaborative effort of the Social Security Administration (SSA), Mathematica’s Center for Studying Disability Policy, and the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), is building the evidence base necessary to improve the national disability support system and the lives of people with disabilities, while also reducing the long-term growth in government costs.