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-Note: In 1986, staff in SSA produced a brief 13-page history of the disability program up through January 1986. This was an internal staff paper. It provides an accessible summary of the historical development of the Social Security disability programs up to that point in time.-

INTRODUCTION

The recognition of the hardships created by a worker's loss of earnings due to disability dates back to consideration of the original Social Security Act of 1935. After the establishment of the retirement insurance program under the 1935 Act, serious thought was given to whether that program should be expanded to provide wage related cash benefits to workers who become permanently and totally disabled before age 65 and to their dependents. Some urged immediate introduction of these benefits, arguing that the permanently disabled were the only major class of people needing protection that did not receive it under the Social Security Act, and yet no other group was more completely dependent or in a more desperate economic situation. Others favored further study, envisioning high costs and difficult administrative problems of a character wholly apart from the existing program. There was concern about the dynamic nature of the disability program, and the administrative difficulty in making disability determinations, i.e., the subjectivity of determining whether a person was truly disabled or out of work for other reasons such as age, obsolete skills or experience, etc.

During the period from 1940 to 1950, the Social Security Board and its 1946 successor, the Social Security Administration, recommended in their annual reports that benefits be provided to permanently and totally disabled workers as part of the Social Security system. The agency also recommended that benefits be paid to the worker's dependents -- a feature of the retirement program since 1939. In 1948, the Advisory Council on Social Security to the Senate Finance Committee made specific recommendations for the payment of Social Security benefits to disabled workers, which would later serve as the basic framework for legislation in this area. A minority of the Advisory Council opposed the plan, recommending instead that protection against the risk of total disability be provided by State assistance programs aided by Federal grants.

Based on the recommendations of the 1948 Advisory Council, the House of Representatives, in 1949, passed a bill containing provisions for the payment of benefits under title II of the Social Security Act to permanently and totally disabled insured workers. However, the Senate-passed version of the bill made no provision for disability insurance benefits. Instead, provision was made for grants in aid to the States for public assistance to permanently and totally disabled, needy individuals. The Senate version was adopted in conference and reflected in the final bill enacted as the Social Security Act Amendments of 1950.

The new program of Federal grants to States for aid to the permanently and totally disabled was enacted as title XIV of the Social Security Act. It complemented similar programs for State public assistance to the aged and the blind enacted in the original Social Security Act of 1935 as titles I and X, respectively. These three programs for State public assistance would be replaced in 1974 by the Federally administrated program of Supplemental Security Income for the Aged, Blind, and Disabled -- the current title XVI program.

The protection afforded disabled workers under the retirement insurance program was again the subject of legislation in 1952. The Social Security Amendments of 1952 included a measure providing for the establishment of a "disability freeze". The disability freeze provision was designed to protect the benefit rights of workers and their dependents by providing that the worker's period of disability would not be counted in determining insured status under the retirement insurance program or in determining the worker's average earnings for purposes of computing benefit amounts. Under the 1952 Amendments, the disability freeze provision would become operative July 1953, but only if Congress took additional action to affirm the measure before that date. The Congress took no action on the measure, and the 1952 disability freeze provision did not become operative. However, its specific provisions would serve as the basis for the disability freeze enacted in the Social Security Amendments of 1954.

THE DISABILITY PROGRAM PROVISIONS

The 1954 Amendments created the first actual Social Security disability program with the institution of the disability freeze. Recognizing the importance of rehabilitating disabled persons, the Congress also provided in the 1954 Amendments for the referral of such persons to State rehabilitation agencies. Disability determinations for purpose of the freeze would be made mostly by appropriate State agencies (presumably, the State rehabilitation agency) under agreements with the Secretary of HEW, and financed from the Trust Funds. The House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees stated that this would serve the dual purpose of encouraging rehabilitation contacts by disabled persons, and would offer the advantages of the medical and vocational case development undertaken routinely by the rehabilitation agencies.