Disability Supports
Disability supports consist of a wide array of federal, state, and local programs which range from income support to caregiving. Among the most prominent are Social Security Disability Insurance, Supplemental Security Income, and Medicaid.
Designing Universal Family Care
The final report of the Academy Study Panel on Caregiving identifies policy options along with the tradeoffs associated with specific policy choices for states considering implementing paid family and medical leave and long-term services and supports social insurance programs.
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SSI and Veterans, COVID-19 and People with Disabilities
July 16, 2021
This fact sheet describes the urgency of updating Supplemental Security Income (SSI) after decades of federal neglect, especially as policymakers work to “build back better” in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. It includes policy options for ensuring that seniors and people with disabilities are able to access basic economic stability and live with dignity.
September 2022
This essay by Nicole LeBlanc, a disability policy advocate and self-advocate, discusses the ways that COVID-era stimulus checks and the closure of Social Security offices nationwide affected people with disabilities.
May 5th, 2020
Academy Members and other partners joined the Academy’s third Virtual Roundtable on Responding to the COVID-19 Crisis: Impacts on the Disability Community. The online discussion was anchored by brief presentations from Academy experts and a Q&A moderated by Rebecca Vallas, Center for American Progress. See below for additional speakers.
Access to Long-Term Care Services
June, 2019
This report explores strategies that states could pursue to better support families in meeting evolving care needs over the lifespan. The first three chapters of the report explore the challenges families face in the realms of early child care and education (ECCE), paid family and medical leave (PFML), and long-term services and supports (LTSS).
April 7, 2020
Growing LTSS costs compete with other state priorities like health care, education, and infrastructure. As families reduce labor market participation to care for loved ones, economic growth suffers. Unmet LTSS needs drive up medical costs and harm quality of life for people with disabilities.
October 22nd, 2020
People with disabilities and the elderly face significant risks to their health and financial wellbeing due to the COVID-19 crisis. Certain disabilities and chronic illnesses can put people with disabilities and older individuals at a higher risk of severe illness or death from a COVID-19 infection, especially those that are currently in institutional care facilities.
Social Security Disability Insurance
January, 2017
Our nation’s social insurance infrastructure forms the foundation of economic and health security for American workers and their families. Like all infrastructure, it must be periodically strengthened and modernized if it is to continue to meet the needs of a changing economy and society. This Report presents the new Administration and Congress with a range of evidence-based policy options, developed by the nation’s top social insurance experts, for doing so.