The U.S. disability system is failing--growing at an unsustainable pace for taxpayers and delivering relatively poor outcomes to those with disabilities.

The costs of disability programs are rising at an unsustainable pace. In all likelihood this will produce calls for program reforms. More systematic solutions should be considered, like experience rating SSDI payroll taxes.

Richard Burkhauser of Cornell and Mary Daly of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, coauthors of The Declining Work and Welfare of People with Disabilities (AEI Press, September 2011), offer a "work first" approach that has the potential to shrink caseloads, curb costs, and improve the economic outlook for people with disabilities.

While difficult to achieve, fundamental disability reform is possible.

In the 1990s, social expectations of single mothers shifted.

Changes in Social Security policy have reduced the willingness of employers to provide accommodations and rehabilitation and their workers to seek them by making access to DI benefits much easier for workers and failing to make their employers more directly pay for their movement onto the rolls.

Christina Hoff Sommers' Bradley Lecture.