The Washington Post's Data on Social Disability is Just Plain Wrong

[red dog 1]

TalkPoverty.org
April 13, 2017


Earlier this month, the Washington Post ran a front-page story about Social Security disability in rural counties, followed this past Sunday by an editorial calling for a wholesale restructuring of Social Security Disability Insurance.

Several SSDI experts, including our colleague Rebecca Vallas, as well as Kathleen Romig of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and Dean Baker of the Center on Economic Policy Research, published responses explaining what the Post missed in their reporting.

But it turns out the article's problems go even deeper than they thought.
Not only does the Post's reporting paint a misleading picture about SSDI, but the data analysis they published is just plain wrong.

The Post's central assertion - flanked by an interactive map - was that as many as one-third of working-age adults in rural communities are living on monthly disability checks.
But the data analysis supporting this argument doesn't hold up.

In a sidebar to the article, the Post says they used publicly available county-level data from the Social Security Administration (SSA), to count "every working-age person who receives benefits through the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, or both."

BUT THE SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION DOESN'T PUBLISH THE DATA NEEDED FOR THAT CALCULATION.

In an email response to our request for these data, the SSA confirmed that these data are "not readily available."

The Center for American Progress also reached out to the Post to ask about their data.
The Post confirmed in an email exchange that they did indeed rely on publicly available data, and identified the specific reports, tables, and figures they used.

We tried to replicate their analysis, and here's why their numbers are flat-out wrong.
(Warning: We are about to dive head-first into the weeds)

More:
http://talkpoverty.org/2017/04/13/washington-post-data-social-security-disability-just-plain-wrong/

[Wellstone ruled]

1. Washington Post has in the past

loved to create interesting scenarios of Social Security and SSDI. My question is,are they doing a kiss the King's Ring here.

With this past week of Normalizing of Trump by much of the so called Media,nothing surprises me .