SSA Disability Payments

We have featured Ed Glaeser's unique analysis of conventional wisdom before (here and here) so his insights here should be no surprise. I wish his commentary was not so rare.

There are now 8.8 million workers receiving disability payments from Social Security. I find this number haunting.
The disabled are part of the far larger number of Americans who have left the labor force altogether since the recession, and who don’t seem to be coming back. About 88.9 million people in the U.S. are now out of the labor force, 2.4 million more than a year ago and 11.4 million more than in 2006. Thirty years ago, there was a 40-to-1 ratio between the total labor force and those workers receiving Social Security disability payments. Today that ratio is less than 18-to-1.
In November 1982, unemployment hit its postwar high of 10.8 percent, far higher than the current rate of 7.7 percent. But the total share of workers who are either unemployed or receiving disability payments from the government totals 12.6 percent today...

2013 Is the Year to Go to Work, Not Go on Disability