Disability Costs and Consequences

I have written before about the troubling increase in those reporting a disability in the United States over the last five years.

In February 2021, there were about 30 million Americans reporting a disability.

Today that number is 36 million.

Source: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU00074597

What are the criteria to be considered to have a disability in the numbers above?

There are six disability types according to the Census Bureau standards that are used in compiling this data.

1. Hearing difficulty  deaf or having serious difficulty hearing 

2. Vision difficulty, blind or having serious difficulty seeing, even when wearing glasses 

3. Cognitive difficulty  Because of a physical, mental, or emotional problem, having difficulty remembering, concentrating, or making decisions .

4. Ambulatory difficulty  Having serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs 

5. Self-care difficulty  Having difficulty bathing or dressing 

6. Independent living difficulty  Because of a physical, mental, or emotional problem, having difficulty doing errands alone such as visiting a doctor’s office or shopping 

What is going on?

The most obvious answer is that the increased number of those with a disability is due to an aging population.

This clearly explains some of the increase.

However, note that the disability numbers were relatively flat in the previous five years (2015-2020) when the leading wave of Baby Boomers were already beginning to reach their 70's.

Is something else involved here?

Could any of this be due to effects from Covid?

That certainly could be the case.

However, the numbers actually dropped at the beginning of Covid and did not begin to rise dramatically until the period between March and June, 2021 a year into Covid.

Is it a coincidence that the March-June, 2021 period is also when Covid vaccines were being rolled out most aggressively?

An honest analysis should raise the question of whether the Covid vaccines are responsible for the increased numbers in some form or manner.

Is it possible that Covid or the Covid vaccines might have accelerated disability conditions in an already aging population?

My guess is that an aging population, Covid and the vaccines could very likely all be involved in some way in the increased numbers we are seeing with disabilities.

However, there is another factor that I was completely shocked by in looking at the disability data.

That is the huge number of young people who claim to have a disability.

This seems to be a phenomenon that is especially prevalent with college students at elite universities.

Schools that only reported about 5% of their student body with disabilities a decade ago are now reporting disability rates of 3 or 4 times higher.

Stanford reports that almost 40% of their students have some type of disability.

34% of students at Amherst are reported to have a disability.

Here is a graph that shows the changes in disability rates over the last decade at a number of elite universities.

Source: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/12/8/harvard-undergrad-disabilities-climb/

At Stanford, 24% of undergrads received some type of academic or housing accommodations in the fall quarter. This might mean advantages such as untimed tests, longer periods to turn in assignments, special food in the cafeteria or a single dorm room.

Contrast those figures to numbers for community colleges where only 3%-4% of students receive some type of disability accommodation.

A female Stanford student recently wrote an article for The Sunday Times in which she revealed how she and others gamed the disability system at the school.

Source: https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/40-percent-stanford-undergraduates-claim-disabled-sw99r3k8c

At the Ivy League colleges Brown and Harvard, more than 20 per cent of undergrads are registered as disabled. Contrast these numbers with America’s community colleges, where only 3 to 4 per cent of students receive disability accommodations. 

Bizarrely, the schools that boast the most academically successful students are the ones with the largest number who claim disabilities — disabilities that you’d think would deter academic success.

The truth is, the system is there to be gamed, and most students feel that if you’re not gaming it, you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage.

What is most telling in the article is the fact that everyone knows that most of it is all a scam.

But at Stanford, almost no one talks about the system with shame. Rather, we openly discuss, strategise and even joke about it. At a university of savvy optimisers, the feeling is that if you aren’t getting accommodations, you haven’t tried hard enough.

Another student told me that special “accommodations are so prevalent that they effectively only punish the honest”. Academic accommodations, they added, help “students get ahead … which puts a huge proportion of the class on an unfair playing ground”.

After all, if everyone else is doing it, why shouldn't I?

Of course, none of this would be possible if the powers that be actually did managed the issue responsibly.

Administrators seem powerless to reform the system and frankly don’t seem to care. How do you prove someone doesn’t have anxiety? How do you verify they don’t need extra time on a test? How do you challenge a religious dietary claim without risking a discrimination lawsuit?

I often think back to that conversation with my upperclassman friend. She wasn’t proud of gaming the system and she wasn’t ashamed either. She was simply rational. The university had created a set of incentives and she had simply responded to them.

That’s what strikes me most about the accommodation explosion at Stanford and similar schools. The students aren’t exactly cheating and if they are, can you blame them? Stanford has made gaming the system the logical choice.

We used to live in a world where having a disability was so stigmatized that many with a disability did everything in their power to try to overcome it so as to blend in.

Those with a disability worked harder as they wanted to prove they could do almost anything any other person could.

We have now reached a point where the opposite is true. 

Those with the most ability are claiming disability to further their natural advantages.

Of course, all of these disability accommodations then further diminishes those that have real significant physical or mental disabilities.

There is one final anecdote on this subject that I saw recently on X that adds some additional color.

This tweet was from a traveler who was sitting in the boarding area of a Southwest Airlines flight is another example of how claims about disability have changed.

It should be noted that Southwest just abandoned its open seating system earlier this year and went to assigned seating like most other airlines. People with disabilities were permitted to board first and take their pick of seats under the old system.

In recent years this led to increasing number of passengers requesting wheelchairs for their "disability" to allow them to board ahead of other passengers. As many as 25% of passengers on some flights were claiming the need to board early which was a major reason Southwest changed the policy.

Finding out they were boarding last to an assigned seat seems to have healed them of their disability when they realized there might not be space for their carry on baggage in the overheads.

Indeed, it was a miracle!

All of this shows how important incentive structures are in the formation of behavior.

Incentives drive behavior.

There is one absolute when considering human behavior.

Human beings respond to incentives. We quickly understand what is in our interest and what is not, and we respond accordingly. We will act in accordance with what is in our best interest. Period.

If the incentives for people are properly aligned, you will get the behavior and result you want.  If the incentives are not properly aligned, you will get poor results.  Whenever you get a poor result it is likely that you will find that the underlying incentives were not aligned properly.

The other factor in play here seem to be an increasing entitlement attitude in our society.

The more we see someone else get a special benefit the more we each believe that we should also be entitled to the same advantage.

That attitude expands and compounds over time weakening our social fabric. Trust and the boundaries of civil behavior are eroded.

You can see this in the statistics of those receiving Social Security disability payments.

In the 1980's, those on Social Security disability were about 2% of the U.S. workforce. By the 1990's it had grown to 4% and when Obama was President it went to 6%. It is now over 8%.

That entitlement attitude seems to have accelerated even further beginning with Covid.

However, even though Covid retreated, the attitude remains.

That might also be a reason that disability claims have increased as they have in the last five years.

Whatever the reason for the rise in disability numbers, the important point here is that anyone with a disability is in need of some type of support or accomodation and it comes with a cost.

Those costs put additional pressure on everyone else.

We can afford the financial costs that come to support those with real disabilities.

We cannot afford the cost and consequences associated with the loss of trust in our society that comes from those who want to game the system.