SSI Program Enrollment

Disability program, concerns on rise, By Patricia Wen, July 11, 2011, Boston Globe: “A federally run children’s disability program whose enrollment practices are already the subject of a congressional investigation grew by 3 percent over the past year and is now estimated to cost about $10.3 billion annually. Statistics released last week by the Social Security Administration, at the request of The Boston Globe, showed that at the end of last year, 1.24 million indigent children received up to $700 a month in cash benefits from its children’s Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, compared with slightly fewer than 1.2 million recipients the year before. The youngsters who qualify based on behavioral, mental, or learning disorders grew by 7.2 percent, more than twice the overall rate, and represent 55 percent of all children’s SSI cases. The two largest mental impairment categories – attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and speech delay – grew by 6 and 12 percent, respectively. The third-largest such category is children who qualified based on autism spectrum disorder, and that grew by 13 percent in the past year…”