Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The traditional model for determining eligibility for disability benefits is based on the premises that an individual must be unable to work and that the disability can be medically determined.  With a focus on US disability policy, this article examines an alternative model that has been described as the work-capacity approach. This approach departs from the traditional binary/medical model of disability determination by seeking to identify a person’s remaining work-abilities, as opposed to an individual’s inability to work. Drawing on data of older adults of working age from the Survey of Health Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and the English Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSA), a pre-post reform analyis is provided that appraises whether work-capacity reforms in three countries  – Denmark, Great Britain, and the Netherlands – resulted in improvements in the accuracy of the disability determination process and in the employment rates of people with disabilities.