The major private U.S. disability insurers paid $7.7 billion in benefits in 2007, up 7% from the 2006 total.
Benefits payments rose 4.3% at the Social Security Disability Insurance program, to $91 billion.
Researchers at the Council for Disability Awareness, Portland, Maine, have published those figures in the CDA’s 2007 Long-Term Disability Claims Review.
The researchers have based the claims review data on government data and a survey of CDA member insurers.
The member insurers account for about 75% of the U.S. commercial disability insurance market, CDA researchers estimate.
Over the past 10 years, the number of U.S. workers with long-term disabilities has grown 4 times more quickly than the U.S. workforce, the CDA researchers report.
In 2007, 560,000 U.S. residents collected private disability benefits, and 7.1 million U.S. residents received SSDI benefits.