Secular Trends in the Determinants of Disability Benefits

This paper addresses the question of what is the burden of chronic illness upon Social Security Disability Insurance payments, and it documents how that burden has shifted between different disease groups over the past century. Furthermore, it addresses, at least to a limited extent, the profound intellectual question of what determines disability and how biomedical, economic, social, and institutional factors determine whether an individual will be disabled. The paper begins an exploration of newly collected data on the health conditions and disability benefits of Union Army Veterans and makes comparisons to recipients of disability benefits in more recent times.