62% of SSDI/SSI initial applications are denied, but 51% of those who appeal to an Administrative Law Judge are approved -- revealing systematic under-approval at the front end

In 2024, 62% of initial disability applications were denied, and 84% of first-level reconsideration appeals were also denied. Yet when the same applicants reached an Administrative Law Judge hearing, 51% were approved. This means the system routinely denies legitimately disabled people who then must wait an additional 10-14 months for a hearing. Why it matters: hundreds of thousands of people who will ultimately be found disabled are incorrectly denied at initial review, so they must navigate a complex multi-stage appeals process that takes 2+ years from application to hearing, so many give up before reaching the ALJ stage where they would be approved, so truly disabled individuals fall out of the system entirely and become homeless or die waiting, so the government spends enormous resources adjudicating the same claim 3-4 times instead of getting it right once. The structural root cause is that initial and reconsideration decisions are made by state DDS examiners using paper reviews without meeting the applicant, while ALJ hearings involve face-to-face testimony and vocational expert input -- and the DDS process has no accountability mechanism tying initial denial rates to eventual ALJ approval rates for the same claims.