The social security administration takes many factors into account when determining your eligibility for disability benefits. Usually, you need to prove that you are not capable of working, which makes complete sense when you think about what the benefits are used for on a large scale. The SSA wants to know if you are capable of performing what they call substantial gainful activity.

One major factor they analyze when determining if you’re able to work is your age. Many applicants don’t understand how important age really is in this process. A person’s age might not make them more or less disabled but time is a very valuable commodity. Younger workers have the innate ability to learn new skills much more effectively than someone who may be 20 years older. Part of the approval process looks at whether you are capable of performing the work you were able to do before the disability, but the SSA also looks at your ability to perform a different type of work after your disability. As an example, pretend that you work on the line at an auto assembly plant. After a disability takes places, it’s likely you couldn’t perform this same line of work, but the transition to learning an office job is crucial and age plays a large role in that transition. A worker that is 30 years old can make this transition much better than an older worker let’s say in his early 60’s could for obvious reasons.

Another major factor the Social Security Administration looks at is your level of education. Education is emphasized for the same reason as age is when determining your ability to work. As an example, take two workers from the same company performing the same job. Suppose one worker has a college degree and the other dropped out during high school and has not pursued any type of formal education. If the two workers are put in the same unfortunate position after a disability, the more educated worker has many more options to work post-disability. An advanced degree gives more opportunities for working in an alternative field or a less physically demanding but more mentally demanding employment position. For this reason, your level of education is highly scrutinized and it becomes much more difficult to show that you are unable to work if you have an advanced degree.

Your work history will also play a large role in determining your ability to perform substantial gainful activity. Much like in the previous two factors of age and education, your work history helps the SSA make a decision about your ability to find alternative employment. For example, let’s compare two different employers currently holding the same work position, but have much different work history. A diverse work history will make it much more difficult to prove you are incapable of working, but an employee that has made this his/her only position throughout their entire life will have a much harder time adapting to a new line of work. For this reason, a varied and diverse work history can work against you when applying for social security disability benefits.  That's why it is vitally important you work with Lansing social security attorneys - http://theclarklawoffice.com/social-security-attorneys/ that are fully versed with SSA guidelines whenever you have a question regarding your rights.