Contention one eugenics
Supplemental Security Income (SSI) marriage penalties force people with
disabilities (PWD) to make a choice between love and healthcare
Pulrang 20 (Andrew Pulrang (BA, MA) is a freelance writer and retired service provider/exec
for nonprofit disability services, “A simple fix for one of disabled people’s most persistent,
pointless injustices.” Aug 31, 2020: https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2020/08/31/asimple-fix-for-one-of-disabled-peoples-most-persistent-pointless-injustices/?sh=5aa3f57c6b71
When you hear the phrase “marriage equality,” you probably think of the movement that culminated in a Supreme Court ruling in
2015 that made marriage legal for same-sex couples throughout the United States. But there is a somewhat similar movement still going on, though comparatively less
It’s the effort to change longstanding Social Security rules that penalize disabled people
who marry.
known.
There is an important difference between these two movements, and the barriers they target. With same-sex marriage, the obstacle was fundamental. In most U.S.
states, it was entirely against the law for same sex couple to marry. It was illegal. For disabled people, the barrier isn’t strictly speaking legal, at least not in this
But for many there is a financial barrier — a major
loss of benefits simply for getting married. That’s why the issue is often referred to as “marriage
penalties.” You can get married, but if you rely on benefits for incomes support or health
coverage, you’ll pay a price. And for many disabled people, the price is steep — much too steep
to simply shrug off for the sake of love.
straightforward a way. Any disabled people has the legal right to marry.
What are “marriage penalties” and how do they affect people with disabilities on Social Security?
The term “marriage penalties” refers to a bundle of Social Security rules that trigger reductions
or complete loss of benefits for otherwise eligible disabled people when they marry. In some
cases it can result in a lower monthly check. In other cases, it can trigger loss of benefits entirely.
And loss of Social Security benefits almost always results in loss of health insurance too, which
for many disabled people is far more damaging than loss of monthly income. Medicare and
Medicaid typically cover far more health care and support services than any private health plan.
And crucially, Medicaid is virtually the only health insurance that pays for long term home care,
which [some] disabled people like Dominick rely on for assistance with everyday self-care tasks,
like getting out bed, bathing, dressing, and eating. For someone like Lori, whose disability
changes over time, steady and flexible medical coverage is equally essential.
For most disabled people, especially those whose impairments are significant enough to qualify
for Social Security, health care isn’t a “just in case” insurance policy. It is a lifeline and the
foundation for building a safe, satisfying, and fulfilling life.
There is a nominally logical rationale for reducing income and health care benefits for some disabled people when they marry. A disabled person on their own may
need full benefits to survive. But if they marry, then their spouse can be relied upon to help support them, financially and logistically. So the disabled person who
marries needs less financial support. There is also a more general assumption two people sharing a household can live the same lifestyle for less money than they can
apart. Or so the reasoning goes.
But on another level, marriage penalties don’t stand up to broader, modern financial or moral
scrutiny.
For one thing, marriage penalties are inconsistent. They affect some disabled people and not others. And those it does affect it
impacts differently based on differences that most observers would say are pretty insignificant. Explaining each rule and formula for each situation would require a
full article on its own, but in general, how marriage penalties play out for any particular disabled person on Social Security depends on several factors:
• Whether they are on Supplemental Security Income, (SSI) or Social Security Disability, (SSDI), or both. The key to SSI eligibility is income and savings. For SSDI
it’s the disabled person’s work record, or the work record of a parent or spouse.
• If they are on SSDI, it makes a difference whether it is from your own work, or based on parent or spouse. For instance, Lori’s SSDI derives from her deceased
father, which would trigger a loss of benefits if she marries. If she had her own SSDI, there wouldn’t be a marriage penalty. And SSI has its own rules involving
benefits amounts and savings.
• It also makes a difference whether the person the disabled person wants to marry is also disabled and on SSI or SSDI.
As disability scholar Ari Ne’eman recently noted in a New York Times article on how benefits are confusing by design, the sheer complexity of these different rules
Intentionally or not, they further penalize people who have less
access to accurate information, and less ability to strategically plan out their finances and legal
arrangements. Because obviously, if you know about these penalties ahead of time, you can
avoid them by “simply” not getting married. It’s a terrible position, and a gut-wrenching decision
as anyone who is married or has wanted to marry well knows. But the penalty itself, and the
supposed savings to the taxpayer, is easily avoided. But it’s also easily triggered if the people
involved don’t know about it, or if they get bad advice about it. In a sense, the government hopes
in part to save money by disabled people accidentally triggering these benefits reductions.
are, like most disability benefits rules, “Kafkaesque.”
The whole business around Social Security benefits and marriage is shady, and feels inherently discriminatory. It also violates some of the most
basic and cherished norms of American society.
“The overall
first-marriage rate in the United States for people ages 18 to 49 is 48.9 per 1,000. For people
with disabilities it’s just 24.4.” While marriage is far from the only path to happiness, it is something most adults at least aspire to on some
Another Times article from 2016 quotes Philip Cohen, a sociologist at the University of Maryland-College Park, who notes,
level. And for those who are lucky enough to find someone they love, marriage offers enormous benefits that go far beyond financial or practical conveniences.
Disabled people in particular both struggle more than others to find this kind of companionship, and benefit from it in ways that can never be quantified.
Do we really want to discourage disabled people from marrying, or punish them financially for doing so?
These penalizing benefits rules that specifically target disabled people also reflect outdated ideas of marriage itself.
Marriage is no longer quite the one-way caretaking situation it once was. Today we generally
view married couples as equal and independent people, who undertake a limited financial
partnership, but also try to preserve a healthy degree of independence. The idea that by marrying,
a disabled person transfers in some way the responsibility for their care from the government to a
spouse is grossly outdated, in terms of both gender roles and a modern understanding of
disability.
It doesn’t make much financial sense either. The efficiencies achieved by living as a couple with
pooled resources can be quickly wiped out by the high cost of living with disabilities. Disability
is expensive, and even those couples with more traditional financial relationships, with one
caring for the other, need all the financial leeway they can get.
Most importantly, almost nothing about single vs. couple finances can make up for a disabled
person losing eligibility for Medicare or Medicaid. Even with Obamacare’s protections for preexisting conditions, private health insurance simply can’t cover some key disability-related
expenses the way Medicare and especially Medicaid can. And even with a working spouse,
having strong health insurance that thoroughly covers both is far from guaranteed.
Finally, although marriage penalties do not make marriage illegal for disabled people, as
marriage for same-sex couples once was, for disabled people in love it feels and functions like an
official disapproval and practical impediment to marriage — specifically and solely for them. It
feels and functions like a violation of basic human rights, based on disability.
The simplest, most comprehensive way to undo this injustice would be to make marriage entirely irrelevant in all cases, and judge eligibility and amounts solely on
each individual’s situation, whether married or not. What would this cost? It’s hard to know for sure.
A 2003 study by the Social Security Administration offered some possible changes to reduce or eliminate the widely criticized “disincentives” and confusion in
eligibility and rate rules for married couples and those living together. It offered some dollar amount estimates, but they weren’t very definitive. And by now, 17 years
later, they are probably out of date. It may be worth noting that even the seemingly simple option of simply treating all recipients as individuals, regardless of marital
status or cohabitation, may produce unintended consequences. Reform legislation must be crafted with care. But at least these complications would be mostly in favor
of recipients with disabilities.
But since most disabled people simply respond to these rules by not marrying, the “savings”
derived from continued marriage penalties are never fully realized anyway. Recipients get full
benefits by not marrying. They would get the same full benefits by marrying if we eliminated the
penalties. The only savings we would lose is from the people who have their benefits cut because
they didn’t understand that it would happen. It’s taking advantage of these programs’
complexity, and disabled people’s lack of information and competent legal guidance. It is a
morally ambiguous situation at best.
Dominick has struggled for a long time to bring the issue to people’s attention. In a 2016 blog post, he encapsulates the choice this issue forces on disabled people:
“When people with disabilities have to choose between their basic necessities and marriage ... we have no choice but to choose to live and to function, which means
being unable to marry the people we love.”
But while most of the disability advocacy community knows about marriage penalties and wants to see them eliminated, fairly little progress has been made so far.
Meanwhile, Lori is working towards legislation that would specifically address her situation and other like hers who are disabled and on SSDI through a parent’s work
record, with a campaign for a ‘Lori’s Law’ to address marriage penalties.
“When something cuts you to the core … not doing something about it feels more unbearable than accepting the status quo.”
Discouraging disabled people from marrying, or worse, incentivizing them to divorce may not be the intent of Social Security rules, but it is certainly the practical
effect. As 2020 candidates and lawmakers think about disability policy and appealing to disabled voters, ending the marriage penalties should be high on the list of
priorities. It may not be the most crucial disability issue, or one that affects the most disabled people. But few disability issues have such a strong moral and instinctual
case for reform.
The marriage penalty otherizes PWDs by perpetuating eugenic stereotypes
of being “unfit”
Evans 21 (Dominick is public speaker, and social activist who focuses on LGBT rights and disability
rights. “Marriage Equality”. Center for disability rights: https://cdrnys.org/blog/disability-dialogue/thedisability-dialogue-marriage-equality/
When people with disabilities have to choose between their basic necessities and
marriage, it is a no-brainer. We have no choice but to choose to live and to function,
which means being [are] unable to marry the people we love. This also unwittingly lends
credence to the misconception that people with disabilities do not have relationships,
are not sexual beings, and do not have the same desires for love or a family that nondisabled people are able to freely express. This is emphasized by the fact that Social
Security can make the determination that a couple is living as if they are married, and
cut services like SSI and SSDI, whether there is a legal marriage or not. It can be
incredibly dangerous for couples to live together when at least one person has a
disability, and that person receives benefits, for this very reason. Many arguments have
been made stating that everyone loses access to programs like SSI, Food Stamps, and
section 8 if they get married. With those arguments comes the idea that those of us with
disabilities are just looking for a handout. Most people experience disability at some
point in their lives. When those that become disabled later in life, or those who are older
Americans and have similar needs to those who have disabilities, have to consider
getting divorced simply to get needed healthcare and financial services, there is a
problem with this system. Imagining if some of the newly married LGBT couples had to
get divorced in a few years for this very reason, places this entire issue into perspective.
What a cruel twist of fate that would be, after waiting to get married for so long. Yet, this
is an entirely realistic outcome for those who develop illnesses or injuries. People with
disabilities need access to services. The exorbitant cost of living with a disability makes
it impossible to turn those services down. All of the services I mentioned previously,
SSI, Medicaid, SSDI/Medicare, Section 8, Food Stamps, and welfare are impacted, and
typically lost, if the person on these programs gets married. That needs to change. Not
every person with a disability can have a job, but when we can, we need to be able to
make a living wage, as well as have the ability to get married while keeping our
healthcare services. Marriage offers many benefits that are not available to single
individuals. One of the most important, having your partner with you at the hospital, has
been denied to people with disabilities, including myself, even when a partner has
power of attorney, there is a living will, or even with other papers attempting to denote
the relationship status. Marriage universally protects couples and families, and we
deserve the right to have those protections.A movement is swelling in the disability
community. People are becoming aware of the issue. I have set out to start planning
rallies, protests, meetings with our legislators, and other events, so we can move our
activism to the next level. While this is just a splash into all of the issues that surround
marriage equality for people with disabilities, the important thing to know is that those of
us living with disabilities deserve the choice to get married, just like anyone else. No
penalty should take that choice away. Until this changes, I, and now many others, are
prepared to fight.
This is rooted in the Eugenics and forced sterilization movement; marriage
penalties are only a continuation of state intervention into the reproductive
and sexual lives of PWD -- repealing them is a human rights necessity
Rainey 17 (Sarah Smith Rainey (Doctor of philosophy) is an assistant professor at Bowling
State University. “In Sickness and In Health: Cripping and Queering Marriage Equality”.
Hypatia, 32(2), 230–246. 2017 http://www.jstor.org/stable/45153614
The PWD marriage equality movement's media campaign is markedly different from the LGBT movement. For one, there are
only a handful of videos, petitions, policy statements, and websites that address either the marriage penalty or the laws that
prevent people with cognitive impairments from getting married. There are primarily three groups working on the issue: People
First of Montana; a group of self-advocates from New York (including Judy Moiseff, a very prominent activist); and the
Facebook group called "Marriage Equality for People with Disabilities" started by Dominick Evans. This is a striking difference
compared to the LGBT movement in which there are literally hundreds of groups and organizations rallying for marriage rights.
The politics of government assistance is the major reason for this conspicuous difference. Whereas LGBT marriage equality
advocates are implicitly promising less reliance on state aid in exchange for marriage rights, the PWD marriage equality
movement is essentially arguing for an increase in aid. In this age of neoliberal governance, rallying for an increase in
It would be easy to
argue that the SSI marriage penalty is in place simply because combining
households lowers the cost of living for each individual. However, the amount
gained in shared living arrangements pales in comparison to the exorbitant costs
associated with living with disability, which may include home modifications,
accessible transportation, medications, and medical equipment. When a person
with a disability on SSI marries a nondisabled person, the couple is sent on a
financial mudslide. The nondisabled spouse's income and assets are automatically
accountable to the disabled spouse, which means that their joint income and assets
are part of the disabled person's determination of benefits, including SSI and
Medicaid. Most of the time this means that the disabled spouse loses SSI benefits and Medicaid, which is the only way to
government spending on social welfare programs like SSI is a particularly difficult position.
pay for the high costs often associated with chronic illness or disability. The disabled person will not qualify again for Medicaid
and SSI until the couple's assets are liquidated and savings spent, throwing a once financially viable pair into poverty.
Particularly in this era of neoliberal governance and shrinking social welfare
programs, it is important to ask why the state would prefer to keep (or create)
poverty and continued dependence on the state. I believe the answer lies in the
motivation behind the other marriage penalty and how it is used to shape family
life. As many heterosexual married folks are already aware (and many more LGBT married folks are about to find out), federal income tax
law contains a "marriage penalty" that rewards families that are able to follow the (male) breadwinner and (female) homemaker model, punishing
those in which both partners work and have similar incomes.4 Many married people have to consider whether it is worth the tax penalty for both
the SSI marriage
penalty encourages people with disabilities to remain single and (presumably)
childless. By shaping the personal lives of people with disabilities, the marriage
penalty continues the pattern of state intervention into the reproductive and
conjugal lives of the supposedly "unfit." In 1927, the US Supreme Court affirmed a Virginia institution's
partners to work. Thus, tax law shapes family and individual decisions about work and childcare. Similarly,
decision to sterilize Carrie Buck, who was diagnosed as "feebleminded," in order to prevent future generations of people who
Although compulsory sterilizations are often associated with the dark
days of the eugenics era, it is important to note that Buck v. Bell has never been
overturned. As the National Council on Disability notes, eleven states have
retained their compulsory sterilization statutes, replete with derogatory language
about preventing "imbeciles" from procreating for the good of society (National Council
lived on state aid.
on Disability 2012). Involuntary sterilizations continue to be practiced even in states that have removed their archaic laws
In addition to
involuntary sterilizations, people with disabilities are often encouraged by
physicians and caregivers to use long-term birth-control methods like implants, are
frequently denied fertility treatments by physicians, and those with children are
(Dhillon and Lefebvre 201 1). In these cases, consent is given by the disabled person's parent or guardian.
often subject to increased scrutiny from government agencies and frequently have
their children removed from their homes (National Council on Disability 2012). According to the National Council
on Disability, "the familial rights of people with disabilities appear to be declining rapidly. In 1989, 29 states restricted the rights of people with
psychiatric disabilities to marry. Ten years later, this number had increased to 33. Further, in 1989, 23 states restricted the parenting rights of
Clearly, the
state (and civil society in general) continues to discourage and prevent people with
disabilities from forming families and reproducing. The SSI marriage penalty is
simply one more way the state exerts control over the life choices of people with
disabilities, encouraging them to remain single and childless. In light of this
precarious history and the current neoliberal valuation of independence, the PWD
marriage equality movement has to negotiate a very difficult line to advocate for
their right to marry and form families. Although many PWD do (or want to) have children, there seems to be
people with psychiatric disabilities; by 1999, 27 states had enacted restrictions" (National Council on Disability 2012, 45).
an attempt to separate the issue of parenting from marriage rights. This is an interesting tactic because, as previously illustrated,
the LGBT movement positions legal marriage as a way to better care for children. Many of the videos and narratives from the
LGBT movement feature the children of same-sex couples; however, children (and the issue of children) are completely absent in
the PWD marriage equality movement. Whether this decision to exclude couples with children from the "face" of the movement
is conscious or not, childless couples may be more palatable to the ableist mainstream. Thus, the absence of PWD with children
perpetuates latent eugenicist ideas about who should and should not reproduce.
Eugenicist policies like the marriage penalty work to socially segregate
PWDs – this results in uneven and discriminatory outcomes which
disproportionately harm poor people and people of color
Sarrett 19 (Sarrett, Jennifer (2019): Incarcerating Disability: How Society-Wide Structural
Violence Diminishes Justice for People with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.
Iperstoria: Journal of American and English Studies. PG 78-79. https://doi.org/10.13136/22814582/2019.i14.335)//KM
The ways our
current social institutions construct I/DDs as a devalued state of being is reliant upon
early foundational philosophical notions regarding people with non-normative minds.3 Plato and Aristotle were concerned with
personhood in order to discuss moral worth. Both relied to some extent on ‘rationality’ or ‘reason.’ In other words, there seemed to be some threshold
of intellectual capacity or ability that was a prerequisite for membership into the human, moral community. Though
neither our modern
concepts of intellectual disability nor the rejection of people with these disabilities were present
during this era, an emphasis on reason in discussions of personhood and euthanasia indicates
some early concepts important to the history behind modern constructions of disability and
ableism (Kiefer 2014). For example, Plato claimed ignorance deformed the soul and noted that “the ignorant [are] to follow” while “the wise man [is]
to take the lead a rule.” This, he noted as “nature’s own ordinance,” thus proposing a natural hierarchy of man based on some kind of intellectual or
reasoning ability. Aristotle relied on intellectual virtues, including rational capacity for his concept of flourishing. Without these virtues, one can still be a
moral being, but one of notably inferior status (Stainton 2002, 454, 456). Threads of these sentiments are seen throughout Western philosophy. St.
Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, and Emmanuel Kant continued to use intellectual disability to think about the limits of personhood, and modern
philosophers and ethicists do so to this day. Many consider personhood to be reliant on certain capacities, including sentience, a concept of self, and
the ability to engage in goal-directed behavior, which requires a sense of time (Kittay and Carlson 2010; Carlson 2010; Taylor 2017). Specifically,
recent work on speciesism, which argues against preferring humans based on their biological and genetic membership to our species, often pits people
As the
foundation of Western thought, these works helped construct the contemporary social systems
with which we all come in contact. Thus, ableism was embedded within the construction of
modern society. Importantly, this work led to the theory and practice of eugenics, the roots of
which can be traced back to Plato but peaked in Western intellectual thought at the end of the
with significant and/or intellectual disabilities against non-human animals in determinations of moral worth (Singer 1977; Taylor 2017).
19th and beginning of the 20th century (Stainton 2002). Eugenics, as conceived of by Sir Frances
Galton, was an attempt to direct human evolution and improve the human race through
practices such as selective breeding. Before being embraced by the Nazi party, eugenics
became very popular in America and eventually came to encompass a range of tools, including
forced sterilization, segregation, and murder, all of which targeted people with I/DDs (GarlandThomson 2015; Stainton 2002). While widely condemned throughout the world today, legacies of eugenics
and the philosophies behind this approach persist in many social institutions. Disability scholar
Fiona Campbell calls modern-day eugenics “more insidious and covert” and centered on
compelling individuals to control or manage themselves within ableist systems and assumptions
(Campbell 2000, 57). In addition to reproductive technologies aimed at reducing or eradicating disability from our communities, such as prenatal testing
and gene editing,
certain social structures and policies have been implicated in this trend by working
to socially segregate people with disabilities. The US education system, for example, classifies children based on various
properties. Some are classified using psychometric testing, several of which were developed as eugenic tools (Chitty 2017, 71; Kornhaber 2012, 2149),
and others are more implicitly classified by class and race through discriminatory school districting policies (Kornblau 2019). These classifications lead
to varying qualities of education. The special education system in particular is criticized for being built on eugenic practices that serve to segregate
students with disabilities (Baglieri et al. 2011; Baker 2002; Riddell 2006), or, in the contemporary moment of mainstreaming, a certain ‘level’ of
disability. These students are then trained for unskilled work for which compliance is a primary skill to hone (Erevelles 2000). While special education is
intended to provide a better education for students with disabilities, in reality, being placed in these programs means lowered expectations, a more
restricted curriculum, and overall poorer adult outcomes (Artiles et al. 2010; “Students from Low-Income Families and Special Education” 2018;
Newman et al. 2011). It
is important to note here that these outcomes are themselves uneven and
discriminatory such that students who are disabled as well as poor and/or of color experience
heightened risk throughout our educational system as well as the other social institutions. Black
and brown students are overrepresented in special education (Houtrow 2015; Stein, Siegel, and
Bauman 2010) as are students who come from impoverished families (Bal et al. 2013). These
outcomes are not mutually exclusive; poverty, in which many people of color live, is associated
with higher rates of disability (Houtrow 2015; Stein, Siegel, and Bauman 2010). Regardless, the
American education system is a site of structural violence and disenfranchisement for students
with disabilities. The well-documented school-to-prison pipeline, which funnels students into the criminal justice system through overly punitive
practices and failures to keep some students at schools, is widely known to disproportionately impact students of color. However, what is less
discussed is how it overly impacts students with disabilities, who are more likely to be suspended, coerced into criminal activity, or referred to officers
for disciplinary reasons (Mallett 2016). The impact is so stark, we perhaps should be talking about the special education-to-prison pipeline. Students
with disabilities have lower graduation rates, more difficulties finding employment after high school, and experience more un- and underemployment.
Even when employed, people with disabilities earn lower wages and are twice as likely to live in
poverty (Taylor 2018; Minkler, Fuller-Thomson, and Guralnik 2006, 700). These outcomes mean people with disabilities
are not as able to participate in community living, which, along with difficulties accessing
transportation and living in segregated facilities, means they are more likely to be excluded from
society.
Contention two is poverty:
PWDs are more likely to live in poverty, and are more likely to rely on SSI
American Psychological Association 2010 (The American Psychological Association.
“Disability and Socioeconomic status.” 2010: https://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/publications/disability)
Although the Americans with Disabilities Act assures equal opportunities in education and
employment for people with disabilities and prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability,
people with disabilities remain overrepresented among America’s poor and undereducated.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s (2017) Office of Disability Employment Policy, the labor force
participation rate for people with disabilities (including physical, intellectual and developmental, sensory, and other
disability categories) aged 16 and over is 20.1 percent as compared to 68.6 percent for people without disabilities of
the same age. Disabilities among children and adults may affect the socioeconomic standing of
entire families. In 2015, roughly 38,601,898 people in the United States had a disability ( U.S. Census Bureau,
2015). Income and Poverty for People With a Disability: The federal government has two major programs to assist
persons with disabilities. Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) is an insurance program for workers who have
become disabled and unable to work after paying Social Security taxes for at least 40 quarters. In this program, a
higher income yields higher SSDI earnings. Supplemental Security Income (SSI) is a traditional welfare
program for individuals with low income, fewer overall resources, and typically no or an
abbreviated work history. The current federal benefit for a single person utilizing SSI is $735 a
month. Furthermore, in many states, SSI recipients automatically qualify for Medicaid. Despite
these and other forms of assistance, persons with disabilities are more likely to be unemployed
and live in poverty. The American Association of People with Disabilities estimates that two thirds of people with
disabilities are of working age and want to work. The high incidence of poverty among persons with a disability fuels doubts
about the sufficiency of public assistance to these individuals and incentives to help people return to work. Results from the
American Community Survey (Americans With Disabilities Act Participatory Action Research, 2014) reveal significant
disparities in the median incomes for those with and without disabilities. Median earnings for people with no disability were over
$30,469, compared to the $20,250 median income reported for individuals with a disability (U.S. Census Bureau, 2015). In an
effort to investigate unemployment disparities, a study surveyed human resources and project managers about their perceptions of
hiring persons with disabilities. Results indicated that these professionals held negative perceptions related to the productivity,
social maturity, interpersonal skills and psychological adjustment of persons with disabilities (Chan, 2008). For individuals who
are blind and visually impaired, unemployment rates exceed 70 percent (American Psychological Association Task Force on
Socioeconomic Status, 2007); for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, the unemployment rate exceeds 80
percent (Butterworth et al., 2015). Nearly one in ten veterans with disabilities are not employed (Bureau of Labor Statistics,
2011). Education Barriers for People with a Disability: Disparities in education have been ongoing for generations. In a large
study of individuals 65 years and older, 20.9 percent of those without a disability failed to complete high school, compared to
25.1 percent and 38.6 percent of individuals with a nonsevere or severe disability, respectively, who failed to complete high
school (Steinmetz, 2006). Great disparities exist when comparing the attainment of higher degrees.
According to the 2015 Census, about 15.1 percent of the population age 25 and over with a
disability have obtained a bachelor’s degree or higher, while 33 percent of individuals in the
same age category with no disability have attained the same educational status (U.S. Census
Bureau, 2015). Health and Well-Being
Lower levels of SES have consistently been correlated with poor health and lower quality of life.
The existence of a disability can contribute to emotional instability for individuals and the
families responsible for their care. Individuals with a disability and their families are at increased
risk for poor health and quality-of-life outcomes when their disability status affects their
socioeconomic standing. Research on disability and health care suggests that individuals with a disability experience increased
barriers to obtaining health care as a result of accessibility concerns, such as transportation, problems with communication and insurance
(Drainoni et al., 2006). Research with adults with mobility impairments indicates that health promotion interventions targeted at persons with a
disability can increase quality of life and control health care costs (Ravesloot, Seekins, & White, 2005). Research on medication adherence for
disabled Medicare beneficiaries illustrates the effects of economic strain on the health of disabled persons. Of disabled beneficiaries, 29 percent
skipped medication, reduced the dosage or failed to fill prescriptions because of the medication’s cost (Soumerai et al., 2006). A substantial body
of research shows that family members who provide care to individuals with chronic or disabling conditions are themselves at risk. Emotional,
mental and physical health problems can arise from complex caregiving situations and the strains of caring for frail or disabled relatives (National
Center on Caregiving, 2017).
SSI Marriage penalties and asset limits punish those who can’t navigate
the system
Ne’eman 20 (Ari Ne’eman is a disability author and activist. “A ‘safety net’ that’s a kafkaesque mess.”
July 25, 2020: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/25/opinion/a-safety-net-thats-a-kafkaesque-mess.html)
Looking at the mess facing S.S.I. recipients who try to work, one feels that a terrible mistake has been made. But history tells a different story: this
Kafkaesque nightmare was a deliberate choice.
When the Social Security Act passed in 1935, its architects had a problem. Amid the Great Depression, the elderly faced horrifying poverty. And yet,
because Social Security’s Old Age Insurance program required beneficiaries to have paid into the system in order to get benefits, the existing generation
of seniors could never qualify for the program. To rectify this, Congress funded states to establish public assistance programs for seniors, single
mothers and the blind.
But offering immediate cash assistance presented a risk. If recipients of public assistance could get help on the same easy terms as “earned benefits”
like Old Age Insurance, what motivation would they have to pay into Social Security?
Before Social Security’s passage, blind activists had convinced several states to establish blindness pension programs that gave a flat cash grant with
limited asset and income restrictions. States established similar benefits for the elderly too. Many wished to let those receiving benefits participate in
the work force and receive help from family and friends, seeing government help as perfectly compatible with living a “normal” life.
In the law’s early years, federal officials, including the Social Security Board’s chairman Arthur Altmeyer, feared that generous state public assistance
programs would build momentum for replacing Old Age Insurance with a more progressive alternative. In the 1930s, Social Security still faced attacks
from left-wing critics like the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the populist Townsend movement. Social Security paid higher benefits to
higher-paid workers and relied on a payroll tax that let the wealthiest pay a lower percentage of their income (a problem that still exists today). Critics
wanted equal benefits for all, financed by a redistributive payroll tax.
To protect against this possibility, Altmeyer made getting public assistance as
unpleasant as he possibly could. States were told that they could not receive federal
money unless they conducted intrusive investigations of every applicant, reducing
benefits to those who received food or shelter from family or friends. Programs that
permitted beneficiaries to work and save were told to adopt more restrictive eligibility
standards or be denied funding.
Inevitably, this sparked backlash. In 1940, the National Federation of the Blind was founded to fight “the oppression of the social worker and the
arrogance of the governmental administrator.” It lobbied Congress to let beneficiaries benefit from their labor, securing incremental improvements
.
But Altmeyer’s vision remained largely intact. Public assistance maintained an
aggressive means test. When [in]disability and aging programs were federalized into the
Supplemental Security Income program in 1971, these restrictions came with them.
Today, economists refer to Altmeyer’s strategy as an “ordeal” — a burden imposed on
those receiving benefits that yields no benefit to others. The purpose of an ordeal is not
to help the beneficiary or others in society. Instead, ordeals deliberately make a program
or service worse in order to discourage people from using it.
Ordeals are a common attribute of programs serving the poor. Since beneficiaries
cannot be charged money they do not have, policymakers impose a cost in time and
suffering. Such indignities are designed to weed out those who would rather go without
than brave the bureaucratic gantlet.
Ordeals are also typical in other disability programs: Medicaid’s bias in favor of institutional care serves a similar purpose, deterring people from
seeking services by elevating institutions over higher-quality community supports. Even if in-home care is less costly for most, institutions are
prioritized since many are willing to go without rather than place themselves or their loved ones inside one. The program is deliberately made worse to
discourage use.
Ordeals likely do save some taxpayer money. But they impose tremendous human cost.
They are also only politically viable when imposed upon the marginalized — more
powerful constituencies are able to demand a higher class of service from their
government.
The Covid-19 pandemic exposed many middle-class Americans to some of the indignities in public programs more typically relied upon by the poor.
One hopes that this experience will spark empathy, an all too rare phenomenon in American politics, and perhaps reform. In one promising sign, Joe
Biden recently proposed to increase S.S.I. benefits while easing asset and income restrictions in his campaign’s disability plan.
Still, ordeals will likely remain a common feature in both disability and poverty policy well after the pandemic is over. As we enter the A.D.A.’s fourth
decade, challenging them will be one of the disability rights movement’s most important tasks.
Asset limits also render PWD expendable in the status quo
Altiraifi 20 (Azza Altiraifi is a research and advocacy manager for the Disability Justice Initiative at the
Center for American Progress ‘A deadly poverty trap: Asset limits in the time of the Coronavirus” April 7,
2020: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/deadly-poverty-trap-asset-limits-time-coronavirus/
As the COVID-19 pandemic triggers unprecedented economic turmoil, lawmakers, economists, and advocates are renewing calls to eliminate asset tests in public assistance
programs. These tests—which require applicants and beneficiaries to have resources below a certain threshold in order to qualify for benefits—trap people in a state of
economic precarity and have been particularly harmful for people with disabilities, whose economic condition has generally declined since the 1970s. Years of research show
that asset limits are an impediment to saving and wealth-building, but most major public assistance programs continue to rely on them to determine eligibility. Alarmingly, this
means that people who have participated in benefits programs lack the savings necessary to weather the financial storm triggered by COVID-19. This pandemic may increase
legislative will, at least temporarily, to suspend asset tests for certain programs and raise the asset limits for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) recipients. However, it should
not have taken a global pandemic to recognize that a system that bars low-income, mostly disabled, beneficiaries from saving would render them more acutely vulnerable during
crises.
Asset limits undermine program beneficiaries’ ability to prepare for financial crises Most major public assistance programs are meanstested, in that they restrict eligibility to people with incomes below a certain threshold—and apply stringent asset tests to ensure that beneficiaries’ resources do not exceed the
limit set for that program. With unemployment spiking because of the coronavirus pandemic, these asset restrictions will prevent many newly unemployed people from obtaining
the relief these benefits programs provide. There is great variability across states and programs, but generally, assets include liquid and nonliquid resources such as checking
limits are
purportedly in place to ensure that only the neediest people receive
benefits. In practice, however, they set up a perverse and
counterintuitive incentive structure that compels people to spend down
their monthly earnings or risk having their benefits cut. Put simply,
benefits recipients are forced to compromise their long-term economic
security by depleting their existing savings in order to attain the
immediate and life-sustaining relief these benefits programs provide.
Furthermore, the variability across programs creates a bureaucratic
quagmire that serves as a barrier to applying for and receiving needed
assistance. Reviewing prospective and current beneficiaries’ reported
assets is administratively burdensome and costly for both the states
and the families that must compile this information. And critically, the
benefits that these programs provide are meager, preventing
recipients from attaining long-term economic security through
participation in the programs alone. For example, the SSI program provides
and savings accounts, stocks and bonds, and certain property, but not net worth in homes and cars under a certain value
. These
modest monthly cash assistance to seniors and people with significant disabilities that
preclude substantial gainful employment. In 2020, the maximum federal benefit for
individuals is $783 a month, nearly three-quarters the federal poverty line. Therefore,
the SSI benefit alone is insufficient to lift beneficiaries out of poverty
but plays an essential role in keeping recipients from sinking into deep
poverty. However, the stringent asset limits associated with SSI
undermine this potential benefit. To be eligible, applicants cannot have
assets that exceed $2,000 for individuals and $3,000 for married
couples. These limits have not been updated in 40 years, thus
pushing beneficiaries deeper into poverty every year. Given the strict
limits, not only are beneficiaries depleting their monthly earnings to
maintain eligibility, but couples are also being penalized due to the
substantially lower asset limit for married individuals. Because of this
system, as the COVID-19 pandemic spreads, SSI recipients will not
have any meaningful savings to draw on, leaving them especially
vulnerable to homelessness and food insecurity. Asset limits affect
people with disabilities in myriad ways The harms caused by asset limits are farreaching, trapping disabled people and families, in particular, in precarious economic conditions
and contributing to the disproportionately high poverty and unemployment rates they face.
Therefore, when crises such as the current pandemic grip the country, these groups are among
those hardest hit. Yet asset limits also compound the oppression faced by
people with disabilities in less direct ways. The use of these tests
carries unintended consequences, such as those outlined below, that
undermine the long-term financial security of people with disabilities
and entrench ableism. Financial exclusion In 2017, slightly more
than one-quarter—26 percent—of working-age people with disabilities
lived in poverty, more than twice the rate of their nondisabled peers.
Furthermore, a whopping 60.5 percent of households containing a
person with a disability were considered “asset poor,” meaning they
did not have enough resources to live at the federal poverty level for
three months. In 2020, a family of four would need at least $6,550 to live at the
federal poverty line for three months; yet this amount is higher than the asset limit set
for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Temporary Assistance
for Needy Families (TANF) in several states. There is evidence to show that people who
receive means-tested public assistance are more likely to be asset poor than lowincome people who are not enrolled. In fact, asset tests in public assistance programs
are associated with a diminished likelihood of benefits recipients having even modest
savings, as well as a greater likelihood of them being unbanked or underbanked—
having a bank account but also using alternative financial services such as payday
loans. A study by the Urban Institute found that in states with relaxed asset limits for SNAP, participating lowincome families were 5 percent more likely to have a bank account than they were in states with strict asset limits.
The most recent survey by the Federal
Deposit Insurance Corporation shows that working-age people with
disabilities are disproportionately more likely than their nondisabled
peers to be unbanked or underbanked. Alarmingly, this has persisted
for people with disabilities, while the percentage of unbanked or
underbanked people is declining for other historically marginalized
groups. This leaves individuals with disabilities more vulnerable to the
For people with disabilities, this is critical.
economic fallout of COVID-19. The $1,200 cash assistance that the
recently passed Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security
(CARES) Act provides is a financial lifeline. But people who are
unbanked will have to wait several weeks longer to receive this critical
assistance. Increased criminalization and surveillance The U.S.
criminal legal system has grown increasingly entangled with the
administration of public assistance programs. Following the welfare
reform policies of the 1990s, states began collecting more invasive
biometric data and information from applicants, beneficiaries, and their
families. These data are often shared with law enforcement,
expanding the reach of the carceral system and forcing applicants and
beneficiaries to forgo most expectations of privacy in order to retain
eligibility. Critically, law enforcement is not simply engaged in passive
surveillance, but rather actively using it as a tool to punish people who
have evaded the reach of the criminal legal system. For instance,
people who have outstanding warrants or have violated the terms of
their parole risk having their benefits cut. Additionally, the latest
COVID-19 response package bars people who have fallen behind on
child support payments from receiving the $1,200 stimulus check
meant to provide immediate economic relief. In 2019, the Trump administration
proposed monitoring the social media use of recipients of Social Security benefits in order to identify fraud. While this
proposal was ultimately dropped, it reflects a disturbing reality for benefits recipients: Even though fraud is incredibly
rare, presumptive criminality is attached to those who apply for and depend on benefits. This web of criminalization
and surveillance ensnares people with disabilities, who are overrepresented in the carceral system and more likely to
have criminal records or receive a mental illness adjudication, further undermining their economic security. This is
especially critical now, since prisons and jails accelerate the spread of infectious diseases such as COVID-19. People
who are incarcerated cannot practice physical distancing and lack access to adequate health care, sanitation, and
other critical supports. Once released, formerly incarcerated people face intense economic and political
As a result, people with records and
those currently incarcerated—a disproportionate number of whom are
disabled—will be especially vulnerable to infection, death, and
economic hardship due to COVID-19. Asset limits compound this
marginalization. By trapping beneficiaries in economically precarious
positions, they often leave people with few legal options for meeting
their needs. This poverty trap, coupled with the punitive administration
of public assistance programs, accelerates criminalization and
surveillance at a time when people involved in the carceral system are
already at extreme risk. Devaluation of disabled people’s lives and
labor The ableist myth of self-sufficiency undergirds the stated
rationale for asset limits to restrict eligibility. A quick scan of public
disenfranchisement, leaving them without a safety net.
assistance program websites underscores how ubiquitous this myth is.
For instance, the U.S. Department Health and Human Services’
landing page for TANF states that one of the program’s core goals is
“to end the dependency of needy parents on government benefits by
promoting job preparation, work, and marriage.” This framing positions
autonomy as normative and valuable, and “dependency” as harmful
and deviant. For disabled people, such framing carries real-life
consequences. It stigmatizes people with disabilities as lazy, deceitful,
or unworthy for seeking out the support needed to navigate
environments that are inaccessible and ableist. Furthermore, the
denigration of “dependency” as a moral failing has historically been
used to marginalize people of color, women, and, especially, those at
the intersection of these two identities. This valuation of economic
self-sufficiency has resulted in a system that pushes disabled people
further into the financial margins. Many disabled people cannot work
or create without risking their eligibility by surpassing the asset limits
that programs have in place. And when disabled beneficiaries can
work, they are more likely to be working gig jobs or even in sheltered
workshops that pay subminimum wages. This devaluation of disabled
people’s labor ties their worth to their perceived or actual economic
output and renders disabled bodies disposable. This politics of
disposability is epitomized by the recent spate of eugenicist proposals
to ration treatment for COVID-19. Conclusion Asset limits trap
beneficiaries in poverty and have cascading effects on the economic
and social well-being of all people with disabilities. As another
recession looms, it is critical that Congress act quickly to implement
long-overdue structural changes to public assistance programs. The
recently introduced Allowing Steady Savings by Eliminating Tests
(ASSET) Act would eliminate asset limits for SNAP, TANF, and the
Low-Income Housing Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP).
Moreover, it would raise the asset limits associated with SSI from
$2,000 for individuals and $3,000 for couples to $10,000 and $20,000,
respectively, eliminating the marriage penalty. Crucially, it would also
index the new limits to inflation. Additionally, the Achieving a Better Life
Experience (ABLE) Act—which allows people with disabilities to open taxadvantaged savings accounts without affecting their eligibility for certain meanstested programs—should be expanded. Under current law, only people with an
onset of disability prior to turning 26 are eligible. This age restriction should be
eliminated so that all people with disabilities can receive the benefits they
deserve. Even absent congressional action, states have considerable latitude to
raise or eliminate asset tests for SNAP and TANF. Several states and the District
of Columbia have already done so by using “broad-based categorical eligibility”
for SNAP, which gives states the flexibility to lift or eliminate SNAP asset limits—
flexibility that the Trump administration has sought to eliminate—by automatically
enrolling applicants based on their eligibility to receive benefits from other
specified means-tested programs. States that have yet to eliminate these asset
limits should act quickly. As the COVID-19 pandemic further destabilizes the
economy, it is more necessary than ever to ensure that all people, including
those with disabilities, have the resources necessary to weather this crisis.
Ableist structural violence is embedded in western institutions and
perpetuates the ongoing impoverishment of PWDs – reforming social
institutions is key
Sarrett 19 (Sarrett, Jennifer (2019): Incarcerating Disability: How SocietyWide Structural Violence Diminishes Justice for People with Intellectual
and Developmental Disabilities. Iperstoria: Journal of American and
English Studies. PG 77-78. https://doi.org/10.13136/22814582/2019.i14.335)//KM
The history of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD)
is saturated with dehumanizing practices, including incarceration in one form or another.
Unquestioned and rampant ableism1 creates inequities for people with
these disabilities2 in a range of social institutions, including education,
employment, and the criminal justice system. These inequities are some of
the most persistent, yet often unrecognized, forms of structural violence in
American society. Structural violence, as defined by anthropologist Paul Farmer, refers to
“social and economic inequities that determine who will be at risk for
assaults and who will be shielded from them” (Farmer 2003, 17). This form of
violence is socially and culturally constructed and, thus, entirely
preventable. The insidious and ubiquitous nature of the structural violence
faced by people with I/DD makes this form of violence particularly difficult
to address. Inequalities in treatment and outcomes are assumed to be
‘natural.’ Most people do not question the practice of placing people into
hierarchies of social worth based on cognitive, intellectual, and behavioral
capacities. This hierarchy has a long history and has been thoroughly
embedded into many modern, Western social institutions. Intellectual and
developmental disabilities have been deemed a marker of a devalued state of being. We see this in media portrayals of
people with I/DDs as unidimensional characters designed to send moralistic messages (Ellis 2015) as well as through
persistent scientific efforts to eradicate these disabilities with cures and treatments. These are subtle and explicit
For many, this marker
justifies the range of negative outcomes associated with I/DDs, from poor
education to poverty to abuse and murder, that are generally overlooked
and widely accepted. In order to fully grasp the extent of ableist structural violence in our social institutions
messages that people with I/DDs are not appreciated members of the community.
targeting people with I/DDs, we must explore the ways in which these institutions relate to and rely on each other.
Education, employment, housing, government, and medicine are all areas
of social and civic life that fail to support, and often actively harm, people
with I/DDs. These institutions have deep connections with each other and often serve to feed into outcomes in other
areas—better education, for example, means better employment opportunities which can lead to safer housing and better
health. With better health and permanent housing, people are better able to participate in communities and in civic life by,
for example, having an address with which to register to vote. The criminal justice system is often overlooked in
discussions about how people with I/DDs experience structural violence. Very little work from scholars or advocates exists
in this area and, of the work out there, much centers on death penalty considerations (Chafetz 2015) and police trainings
about these disabilities (Viljoen et al. 2017). While these issues are important, there are a host of other concerns with the
ways the American criminal justice system understands and responds to people with I/DDs. This holds true whether one
comes in contact with the system as a victim or the accused and is deeply connected to important historical trends in the
disability-related
disparities in the criminal justice system have not occurred in isolation, but
rather are a consequence of disparities and systemic inequities throughout
American society and history. Here, I review what is known about the interaction between people with
I/DDs and criminal justice settings and professionals, and place that knowledge into conversation
with the structural violence inherent in some of our other social
institutions, focusing on education and employment. These two institutions are deeply
ways people with disabilities have been cared for in the U.S. The current paper argues that
connected to criminal justice involvement as well as a range of other disability outcomes and are useful analogues for this
analysis. However, a similar analysis could be done with a focus on civic participation, family life (particularly as it relates
to parenting and sexuality), or other aspects of social life, such as transportation and leisure. My analysis is informed by
and includes examples from interviews I conducted with people with I/DDs about their experiences with criminal justice.
Only by centering their perspectives and reforming the social institutions
that contribute to the risk of criminal justice involvement can we ensure
people with I/DDs experience justice.
The aff is key to resolve poverty - it produces economic security for PWDs
Nunez et al 23 (Kathleen Romig (MA) is Director of Social Security and Disability Policy at the Center on
Budget and Policy Priorities, Luis Nunez is a Research Associate on the Federal Fiscal Policy team, Arloc Sherman
is the vice president for data analysis and research for CBPP. “The Case for Updateing SSI Asset Limits.” Center on
Budget and Policy Priorities. last updated July 25, 2023:https://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/the-case-forupdating-ssi-asset-limits
The Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program for low-income elderly
and disabled people has the strictest savings limits of any federal program.
Eligibility is limited to people who have only $2,000 (or $3,000 for couples).
This is not enough for beneficiaries to weather an emergency, let alone
provide stability or save for the future. Administering the resource limit,
often referred to as an asset test, is burdensome for both Social Security
Administration (SSA) staff and for claimants. Policymakers should
increase or even eliminate SSI’s resource limit amid growing bipartisan
support to do so.The resource limit is the leading cause of erroneous
payments in the SSI program and leads to churn because beneficiaries who
go even slightly over the outdated limit are suspended and then terminated.
Beneficiaries who exceed the limit typically rack up thousands of dollars in
overpayments that are extremely difficult to repay from their meager
benefits. Additionally, SSA employees must administer these complex and
inefficient rules amid a customer service crisis they are in due to
underfunding. Because the value of the limit is not indexed to inflation —
and hasn’t been updated in decades — its value erodes each year due to
inflation. It is now only one-fifth of its 1972 value..A higher limit would
encourage — rather than penalize — saving and allow people to retain
savings to use when they really need those resources. Research shows that
having a financial cushion leads to greater economic security. A higher
limit would also reduce administrative burdens, payment errors, and churn.
And easing or eliminating the asset test would mean that more very low-income seniors and people with disabilities
could get the income support they need to afford the basics and not be forced to first deplete modest savings.
Policymakers have recognized the case for allowing greater savings and have increased or eliminated resource limits
in other economic security programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and
Medicaid.
Thus the plan,
The United States Government should pass the Supplemental
Security Restoration Act
The SSRA modernizes SSI by eliminating marriage penalties AND
adjusting for inflation
Kim 21(Sarah Kim is a freelance disability journalist with a M.S. from Columbia Journalism
School. She writes about DE&I in the realm of disability. “Marriage penalty prevents marriage
equality for people with disabilities.” World institute on disability, Sep 22 2021:
https://wid.org/marriage-penalty-prevents-marriage-equity-for-people-with-disabilities/)
You’ve probably heard of marriage equality or marriage equity, likely in the context of LGBTQ+ rights. But there’s
another kind of marriage inequity affecting people with disabilities: the disability marriage penalty. In this context,
“marriage penalty” refers to a series of Social Security rules that trigger reduction or complete loss of disability
benefits for otherwise qualified individuals when they get married.
The disability marriage penalty punishes people with disabilities in the U.S. who get married by stripping them of
disability benefits such as Social Security benefits and Medicaid. The clause has remained a part of
the benefits policy for years, affecting many thousands of people with disabilities.
Consequently, marriage rates among Supplemental Security Income (SSI) recipients
are half that of the general public.
SSI is a needs-based program that is based on an individual’s income and assets. The SSI program is for people with disabilities
including children and older adults who have limited income and resources. State programs can supplement federal SSI benefits.
When the individual gets married, joint income and assets are evaluated when determining whether a person is still eligible for the
benefits.
Due to this marriage penalty, the system has made it so that many people with
disabilities cannot get married or start a family. This stems from longstanding
institutionalized ableism that actively prevents people with disabilities from living
long, fulfilling lives. Some disability rights advocates trace the marriage penalty back
to the eugenics and institutionalization movements, beginning in the 19th century
and continuing in popularity through the 1940s. These entrenched policies of
discrimination included forced sterilization of disabled people and segregated
disabled individuals from interacting with nondisabled people in the belief that they
were preventing disabilities from spreading to offspring.
Although practices like the marriage penalty aren’t as overtly ableist as practices of the past, they still keep people
with disabilities from accessing the same caliber of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that their nondisabled
counterparts have.
When deciding to offer disability benefits, the Social Security Administration assesses one’s income and assets.
This can be a problem for married couples because they may be disqualified if their combined bank balance is
greater than $3,000. Too often, these combined assets and incomes are too high to qualify for federal assistance. A
common assumption is that a nondisabled partner would take care of their disabled spouse financially and
medically, and that additional supports would not be necessary. This is not the case for many
couples, and puts the disabled person at a disadvantage, leaving them completely
dependent on their partner, which can also leave them more vulnerable to abuse,
with no personal income to protect them.
For couples who both have disabilities, the impact is even greater. Married couples are allowed to have
fewer assets than each party would have as individuals. After they marry, they’ll receive about 25
percent less in benefits than they did as two unmarried individuals. The assumption behind this is that
the couple can live on less income together than as individuals.
However, many disability assistance programs — such as community-based services, home-care
aides, and long-term care facilities — only accept Medicaid recipients. And the only way to qualify for
Medicaid is to fall below certain income thresholds. This presents itself as a catch-22. Even if an
individual can afford private health insurance, health care costs for people with disabilities are often
much higher than for nondisabled people.
According to the U.S. Census, employees with disabilities earn on average 66 cents
for every dollar earned by nondisabled peers, putting them at or below the poverty
line. Paying for healthcare, housing, and the basic cost of living can be nearly
impossible. So, for many individuals with disabilities, remaining unmarried is,
unfortunately, their only way of survival.
Often, happily married individuals with disabilities resort to divorce simply to gain
access to healthcare and benefits. In fact, according to OZY, between 2009 and 2019,
nearly 1.1 million Americans with disabilities got divorced, compared to 593,000 who
got married. Roughly twice as many people with disabilities got divorced than
married.
However, even if an individual with a disability isn’t legally married, SSA can
disqualify them for “holding out” as a married couple. If the federal agency finds out
the individual is cohabitating with their partner and sharing living expenses, they can
still lose their benefits, even if they’re not married.
Disability benefit regulations in the U.S. are outdated and inequitable. Most of the SSI eligibility rules have not been
updated since President Nixon signed the Social Security Amendments into law in 1972. The amount of money
recipients receive has also been stagnant, not accounting for inflation.
In June 2021, the Supplemental Security Income Restoration Act was introduced in the US House of
Representatives by Representative Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), and Representative
Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) and in the Senate by Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH).
This bill would modernize
disabilities and seniors.
SSI benefit programs and improve the lives of nearly 8 million people with
The SSI Restoration Act would:
■
Eliminate the disability marriage penalty
by setting the SSI couple benefit rate to two
times the individual rate,
■ Increase the asset cap for individuals from $2,000 to $10,000 and for couples from $3,000 to
$20,000,
■ Increase the benefit rate to match the federal poverty line, adjust for inflation, and
■ Allow people with disabilities to work and earn up to $416 per month without their SSI being reduced
based on their income.
The time for updating SSI policies is long overdue, and this act has the potential to rectify a longstanding injustice.
People with disabilities have been forced to choose between love and survival as a result of archaic policies. The
bill has yet to be passed, but civilian engagement could tip the balance in its favor.
Legislative advocacy is key to change disability policy and attitudes –
empirics prove – it’s the key REDRESS to solve the causes of their impacts
Landmark et al 17 (Leena Landmark, Professor at Ohio University. Dalun Zhang, Professor at Texas
A&M University. Song Ju, Professor at the University of Cincinnati. Melissa Yi, MS from Texas A&M
University. Timothy C. McVey, BA from Ohio University. “Experiences of Disability Advocates and SelfAdvocates in Texas”. Journal of Disability Policy Studies 2017, Vol. 27(4) 203–211)
Legislative advocacy is a prime channel for disability advocates to affect civil rights and disabilityrelated legislation and policy that leads to improved quality of life for individuals with disabilities. To
highlight the current status of disability legislative advocacy, this study examined advocacy experiences based on recent data
from one state that involved 113 disability advocates and self-advocates. Analyses were conducted to examine
the characteristics of advocates, the causes advocated, leadership positions, level of engagement, and frequency of engagement
in the legislative advocacy process. Relations among advocates’ characteristics and advocacy experiences were also examined. Results revealed that individuals with
disabilities mostly relied on their peers in the advocacy process, and the type of disability was associated with the causes advocated. In addition, holding a
leadership position was associated with engagement in the legislative advocacy process. Quality of life is an important goal for all people. For individuals
who have disabilities, the degree to which they are satisfied with their lives may have increased importance because they have not always
been afforded the opportunity to live according to their desires (Francis, Blue-Banning, & Turnbull, 2014; Verdugo, Navas,
Gomez, & Schalock, 2012). Self-determination, one of the comprising domains of the quality-of-life construct, has been linked to positive adult outcomes for
individuals with disabilities. Individuals who possess self-determination tend to achieve greater independent living and employment outcomes than individuals who
are not as self-determined (Wehmeyer & Palmer, 2003). As a component element of self-determination, self advocacy is essential for improving quality-of-life
outcomes. Self-advocacy (including parent advocacy) and leadership skills have played important roles in the history of special education and disability rights. As
early as the 1930s, local groups of parents banded together to obtain educational services for their children with disabilities (Yell, Rogers, & Rogers, 1998). By the
1970s, individuals
with developmental disabilities announced they were people first, and the self-advocacy
movement was spawned in the United States (Longhurst, 1994). An early victory in the effort to gain services required for independent living was the
passage of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which prohibited establishments receiving federal funding from discrimination against people with
disabilities. One of the greatest victories was the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, a civil rights law prohibiting discrimination against people
with disabilities. The advocacy movement has
allowed people with disabilities the opportunity to explore their group
identity, gain a sense of empowerment, and learn how to stand up for equal rights (Browning, Thorin, & Rhoades, 1984).
Landmark legislation such as Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (renamed
the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act in 1990), and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 would not have been
enacted without the advocacy efforts of individuals with disabilities and their families. Through legislative advocacy, Americans with
disabilities have shaped public policy and made their lives better.
Existential threat construction is a coercive psychological operation. You
have an ethical imperative to flip their calculations of urgency to prioritize
structural violence
Olson 15 – prof of geography @ UNC Chapel Hill
(Elizabeth, ‘Geography and Ethics I: Waiting and Urgency,’ Progress in Human Geography, vol. 39 no.
4, pp. 517-526) *Bodies Refers to groups of people, not meant to be discriminatory – thanks Leo :)
Though toileting might be thought of as a special case of bodily urgency, geographic research suggests that the
body is
increasingly set at odds with larger scale ethical concerns, especially large-scale future events of
forecasted suffering. Emergency planning is a particularly good example in which the large-scale threats of future
suffering can distort moral reasoning. Žižek (2006) lightly develops this point in the context of the war on terror, where
in the presence of fictitious and real ticking clocks and warning systems, the urgent body must be bypassed because
there are bigger scales to worry about:¶ What does this all-pervasive sense of urgency mean ethically? The pressure of
events is so overbearing, the stakes are so high, that they nec essitate a suspension of ordinary ethical concerns. After all, displaying
moral qualms when the lives of millions are at stake plays into the hands of the enemy. (Žižek, 2006)¶ In the presence of large-scale
future emergency, the urgency to
secure the state, the citizenry, the economy, or the climate creates new
scales and new temporal orders of response (see Anderson, 2010; Baldwin, 2012; Dalby, 2013; Morrissey, 2012), many
of which treat the urgent body as impulsive and thus requiring management. McDonald’s (2013) analysis of three interconnected
discourses of ‘climate security’ illustrates how bodily urgency in climate change is also recast as a menacing impulse that might require
exclusion from moral reckoning. The logics of climate security, especially those related to national security, ‘can encourage perverse
political responses that not only fail to respond effectively to climate change but may present victims of it as a threat’ (McDonald, 2013:
49). Bodies that
are currently suffering cannot be urgent, because they are excluded from the
potential collectivity that could be suffering everywhere in some future time. Similar bypassing
of existing bodily urgency is echoed in writing about violent securitization, such as drone warfare (Shaw and Akhter,
2012), and also in intimate scales like the street and the school, especially in relation to race (Mitchell,
2009; Young et al., 2014).¶ As large-scale urgent concerns are institutionalized, the urgent body is
increasingly obscured through technical planning and coordination (Anderson and Adey, 2012). The
predominant characteristic of this institutionalization of large-scale emergency is a ‘built-in bias
for action’ (Wuthnow, 2010: 212) that circumvents contingencies. The urgent body is at best an
assumed eventuality, one that will likely require another state of waiting, such as triage (e.g. Greatbach et al., 2005). Amin (2013)
cautions that in much of the West, governmental need to provide evidence of laissez-faire governing on the one hand, and assurance of strength in facing a
threatening future on the other, produces ‘just-in-case preparedness’ (Amin, 2013: 151) of neoliberal risk management policies. In the US, ‘personal
ingenuity’ is built into emergency response at the expense of the poor and vulnerable for whom ‘[t]he difference between abjection and bearable survival’
(Amin, 2013: 153) will not be determined by emergency planning, but in the material infrastructure of the city. ¶ In short, the
urgencies of the
body provide justifications for social exclusion of the most marginalized based on impulse and perceived threat,
while large-scale future emergencies effectively absorb the deliberative power of urgency into the
institutions of preparedness and risk avoidance. Žižek references Arendt’s (2006) analysis of the banality of
evil to explain the current state of ethical reasoning under the war on terror, noting that people who perform morally reprehensible actions
under the conditions of urgency assume a ‘tragic-ethic grandeur’ (Žižek, 2006) by sacrificing their own morality for the good of the state. But his analysis
fails to note that bodies are today so rarely legitimate sites for claiming urgency. In
the context of the assumed priority of the largescale future emergency, the urgent body becomes literally nonsense, a non sequitur within societies,
states and worlds that will always be more urgent.¶ If the important ethical work of urgency has been to identify that which must not
wait, then the capture of the power and persuasiveness of urgency by large-scale future emergencies has consequences for the kinds of normative
arguments we can raise on behalf of urgent bodies. How, then, might waiting compare as a normative description and critique in our own urgent time?
Waiting can be categorized according to its purpose or outcome (see Corbridge, 2004; Gray, 2011), but it also modifies the place of the individual in society
and her importance. As Ramdas (2012: 834) writes, ‘waiting
… produces hierarchies which segregate people and places
into those which matter and those which do not’. The segregation of waiting might produce effects that counteract suffering,
however, and Jeffery (2008: 957) explains that though the ‘politics of waiting’ can be repressive, it can also engender creative political engagement. In his
research with educated unemployed Jat youth who spend days and years waiting for desired employment, Jeffery finds that ‘the temporal suffering and
sense of ambivalence experienced by young men can generate cultural and political experiments that, in turn, have marked social and spatial effects’ (Jeffery,
2010: 186). Though this is not the same as claiming normative neutrality for waiting, it does suggest that waiting is more ethically ambivalent and open than
urgency.¶ In other contexts, however, our descriptions of waiting indicate a strong condemnation of its effects upon the subjects of study.
Waiting can demobilize radical reform, depoliticizing ‘the insurrectionary possibilities of the
present by delaying the revolutionary imperative to a future moment that is forever drifting
towards infinity’ (Springer, 2014: 407). Yonucu’s (2011) analysis of the self-destructive activities of disrespected working-class youth in Istanbul suggests that this sense of
infinite waiting can lead not only to depoliticization, but also to a disbelief in the possibility of a future self of any value. Waiting, like urgency, can undermine the
possibility of self-care two-fold, first by making people wait for essential needs, and again by reinforcing that waiting is ‘[s]omething to be ashamed of because it may be
noted or taken as evidence of indolence or low status, seen as a symptom of rejection or a signal to exclude’ (Bauman, 2004: 109). This is why Auyero (2012) suggests that waiting
creates an ideal state subject, providing ‘temporal processes in and through which political subordination is produced’ (Auyero, 2012: loc. 90; see also Secor, 2007). Furthermore,
Auyero notes, it is not only political subordination, but the subjective effect of waiting that secures domination, as citizens and non-citizens find themselves ‘waiting hopefully and then
frustratedly for others to make decisions, and in effect surrendering to the authority of others’ (Auyero, 2012: loc. 123).¶ Waiting
can therefore function as a
potentially important spatial technology of the elite and powerful, mobilized not only for the purpose of governing
individuals, but also to retain claims over moral urgency. But there is growing resistance to the capture of
claims of urgency by the elite, and it is important to note that even in cases where the material conditions of containment are currently impenetrable,
arguments based on human value are at the forefront of reclaiming urgency for the body. In
detention centers, clandestine prisons, state borders and refugee camps, geographers point to ongoing struggles against the
ethical impossibility of bodily urgency and a rejection of states of waiting (see Conlon, 2011; Darling, 2009, 2011; Garmany, 2012; Mountz et al., 2013; Schuster,
2011). Ramakrishnan’s (2014) analysis of a Delhi resettlement colony and Shewly’s (2013) discussion of the enclave between India and Bangladesh describe people who refuse to give
up their own status as legitimately urgent, even in the context of larger scale politics. Similarly, Tyler’s (2013) account of desperate female detainees stripping off their clothes to
expose their humanness and suffering in the Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre in the UK suggests that demands for recognition are not just about politics, but also about the
acknowledgement of humanness and the irrevocable possibility of being that which cannot wait. The continued existence of places like Yarl’s Wood and similar institutions in the USA
nonetheless points to the challenge of exposing the urgent body as a moral priority when it is so easily hidden from view , and also
reminds us that our research can help to explain the relationships between normative dimensions and the political and social conditions of struggle.¶ In closing, geographic depictions
of waiting do seem to evocatively describe otherwise obscured suffering (e.g. Bennett, 2011), but it is striking how rarely these descriptions also use the language of urgency. Given the
discussion above, what might be accomplished – and risked – by incorporating urgency more overtly and deliberately into our discussions of waiting, surplus and abandoned bodies?
Urgency can clarify the implicit but understated ethical consequences and normativity associated with waiting, and encourage explicit discussion about harmful suffering. Waiting can
be productive or unproductive for radical praxis, but urgency compels and requires response. Geographers could be instrumental in reclaiming the ethical work of urgency in ways
that leave it open for critique, clarifying common spatial misunderstandings and representations. There is good reason to be thoughtful in this process, since moral outrage towards
inhumanity can itself obscure differentiated experiences of being human, dividing up ‘those for whom we feel urgent unreasoned concern and those whose lives and deaths simply do
not touch us, or do not appear as lives at all’ (Butler, 2009: 50). But when
the urgent body is rendered as only waiting, both materially and discursively, it is
just as easily cast as impulsive, disgusting, animalistic (see also McKittrick, 2006). Feminist theory insists that the urgent body,
whose encounters of violence are ‘usually framed as private, apolitical and mundane’ (Pain, 2014: 8), are as deeply political,
public, and exceptional as other forms of violence (Phillips, 2008; Pratt, 2005). Insisting that a suffering body, now, is
that which cannot wait, has the ethical effect of drawing it into consideration alongside the
political, public and exceptional scope of large-scale futures. It may help us insist on the body,
both as a single unit and a plurality, as a legitimate scale of normative priority and social care.¶ In this report, I have
explored old and new reflections on the ethical work of urgency and waiting. Geographic research suggests a contemporary
popular bias towards the urgency of large-scale futures, institutionalized in ways that further
obscure and discredit the urgencies of the body. This bias also justifies the production of new
waiting places in our material landscape, places like the detention center and the waiting room. In some cases,
waiting is normatively neutral, even providing opportunities for alternative politics. In others, the technologies of waiting serve to
manage potentially problematic bodies, leading to suspended suffering and even to extermination (e.g. Wright, 2013). One of my aims
has been to suggest that moral reasoning
is important both because it exposes normative biases
against subjugated people, and because it potentially provides routes toward struggle where claims
to urgency seem to foreclose the possibilities of alleviation of suffering. Saving the world
still should require a debate about whose world is being saved, when, and at what cost – and
this requires a debate about what really cannot wait. My next report will extend some of these concerns by
reviewing how feelings of urgency, as well as hope, fear, and other emotions, have played a role in geography and ethical reasoning. ¶ I
conclude, however, by pulling together past and present. In 1972, Gilbert White asked why geographers were not engaging ‘the truly
urgent questions’ (1972: 101) such as racial repression, decaying cities, economic inequality, and global environmental destruction. His
question highlights just how much the discipline has changed, but it is also unnerving in its echoes of our contemporary problems. Since
White’s writing, our moral reasoning has been stretched to consider the future body and the more-than-human, alongside the presently
urgent body – topics and concerns that I have not taken up in this review but which will provide their own new possibilities for urgent
concerns. My own hope presently is drawn from an acknowledgement that the
temporal characteristics of
contemporary capitalism can be interrupted in creative ways (Sharma, 2014), with the possibility of
squaring the urgent body with our large-scale future concerns. Temporal alternatives already
exist in ongoing and emerging revolutions and the disruption of claims of cycles and circular political
processes (e.g. Lombard, 2013; Reyes, 2012). Though calls for urgency will certainly be used to obscure
evasion of responsibility (e.g. Gilmore, 2008: 56, fn 6), they may also serve as fertile ground for radical
critique, a truly fierce urgency for now.