Authored by Ed Dowd: Beyond the Narrative via Substack,
The Disability Signal Across the Atlantic
On August 11 I wrote US Disabilities Hit an All-Time High of 37 Million In July: UP 23% Since Feb 2021. The BLS Current Population Survey printed 37,029,000 Americans 16 and over reporting a disability. That is seven million more people since February 2021, a 3-to-4 sigma break from the pre-2020 plateau that has not mean-reverted.
The inflection is February 2021 with the Covid vaccine rollout not in 2020 when Covid was at its most virulent strain. Alternative explanations fail the timing and the magnitude test. The UK PIP system corroborates that US survey signal with something the American series cannot give you: medically assessed new claims broken down by body system and underlying cause.
If you want to know whether that US survey signal is real, stop arguing about survey design and look at an administrative system that actually diagnoses people.
Go back to the UK Disabilities (PIP) Project we published at Phinance Technologies. The page is still up...use it. It was built so researchers, doctors, and ordinary citizens could see the same thing we saw in 2023. You ca
