Over the past two decades, the share of working age Americans collecting disability insurance payments has doubled, from 2.3 to 4.6 percent of the population aged 25 to 64, with the largest increases coming among women.

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.

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

The rapid growth of Disability Insurance does not appear to be from a true rise in disabling illness, but rather from policies that increased the subjectivity of the disability screening process.

I learned to appreciate the American free enterprise system by quitting a job in Spain.At age 19, I dropped out of school to pursue a career as a French horn player. After a few twists and turns, I wound up in the Barcelona Symphony, which was a Spanish...

By the end of the year, 10,000 American soldiers in Afghanistan will be home with their families--and their memories. As many as 20 percent of them will suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety or depression, while suicide rates have reached tragic new highs among veterans. In response, the Department of Veterans Affairs has greatly expanded its mental health services.

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.

Community colleges are subsidized through direct state and local government appropriations and through student grant programs. Every student who drops out represents an investment loss by the taxpayers in that student's uncompleted education.