Trump plans to limit disability benefits for older Americans; hundreds of thousands of people could lose benefits

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/10/05/disability-social-security-age-benefits/

Trump plan would limit disability benefits for older Americans
Trump administration officials are considering eliminating age as a factor in deciding whether someone is capable of working.
October 5, 2025 at 4:58 p.m. EDT
By Meryl Kornfield and Lisa Rein

The Trump administration is preparing a plan that would make it harder for older Americans to qualify for Social Security disability payments, part of an overhaul of the federal safety net for poor, older and disabled people that could result in hundreds of thousands of people losing benefits, according to people familiar with the plans.

The Social Security Administration evaluates disability claims by considering age, work experience and education to determine if a person can adjust to other types of work. Older applicants, typically over 50, have a better chance of qualifying because age is treated as a limitation in adapting to many jobs.

But now officials are considering eliminating age as a factor entirely or raising the threshold to age 60, according to three people familiar with the plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private discussions. They also plan to modernize labor market data used to judge whether claimants can work, replacing an outdated jobs database that includes obsolete occupations such as nut sorters and telephone quotation clerks, following a Washington Post investigation in 2022.

Jack Smalligan, a senior policy fellow at the Urban Institute and a former Office of Management and Budget official through five administrations, wrote in a recent paper that if the proposed rule reduced eligibility for the disability program by 10 percent, 750,000 fewer people would receive benefits for all or part of the next decade. In addition, 80,000 fewer widows and children would receive benefits because of the loss in eligibility of a spouse or parent. That would lead to $82 billion less paid out in benefits over 10 years, Smalligan estimated.

Smalligan said research has shown that a majority of older Americans who apply for disability benefits don’t get another job. If the rule didn’t consider age as a factor, more older disabled workers would probably start taking early retirement benefits, significantly reducing their monthly benefit amount.

Older workers who claim retirement benefits at age 62 rather than receive Social Security’s disability insurance would receive 30 percent less in benefits for the rest of their lives.

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