How Social Security Decides
The machinery behind the decision: the Listing of Impairments, meeting versus equaling a listing, your residual functional capacity and the grid rules, what counts as a severe impairment, how your conditions are weighed in combination, what past relevant work means, how age changes the odds, and why most claims are won by proving you cannot sustain full-time work — not by matching a listing.
All How Social Security Decides guides
- Drug Addiction and Alcoholism (DAA) and Your Disability Claim
A history of substance use does not bar SSDI or SSI. Learn SSA's DAA materiality test under SSR 13-2p and how to document your claim honestly.
- Compassionate Allowances and Terminal Illness
How Compassionate Allowances and TERI speed up Social Security disability decisions for severe or terminal conditions, and how to flag your case.
- Transferable Skills and the Step 5 Decision
At Step 5, Social Security must show other work exists that you can do. Here is how "transferable skills" work, and how to test that finding.
- Exertional vs. Non-Exertional Limitations, Explained
Exertional limits are about strength; non-exertional limits are everything else. Here's why the difference shapes how Social Security judges your disability case.
- What a "Severe Impairment" Means at Step 2
Step 2 is a low legal bar that Social Security still uses to deny claims. Here's what "severe" and "medically determinable" really mean, and how to appeal a Step 2 denial.
- How Age Affects Your Disability Claim
SSA's grid rules ease the disability standard at 50 and 55, since retraining for new work gets harder with age.
- The Medical-Vocational Grid Rules
How Social Security's "grid rules" combine your RFC, age, education, and work history to decide disability at Step 5 — and why age 50 and 55 matter.
- Failure to Follow Prescribed Treatment
Social Security can count treatment non-compliance against you only under a narrow test in SSR 18-3p, and only after weighing good-cause reasons like cost, incapacity, or serious risk.
- What a Medical-Vocational Allowance Is
Most disability approvals aren't Listing wins — they're medical-vocational allowances based on function, age, education, and work history.
- Residual Functional Capacity (RFC), Explained
RFC is the most you can still do despite your impairments—here's how SSA builds it and uses it to decide your disability claim.
- The Listing of Impairments (Blue Book), Explained
SSA's Blue Book Listings can mean an automatic disability finding at Step 3 - and not meeting one still leaves Steps 4-5 open.
- Meeting vs. Equaling a Listing
Meeting a Listing means checking every box; equaling means your combined impairments are just as severe. Here's how each works.
- How SSA Considers Your Impairments in Combination
SSA must weigh all your impairments together, not one at a time — this is how several "moderate" conditions can add up to disabling.
- How SSA Evaluates Your Symptoms and Credibility
SSA no longer judges your "credibility." It evaluates whether your reported symptoms are consistent with the medical evidence and the record as a whole. Here's how that works.
- What "Past Relevant Work" Means (and the New Five-Year Rule)
SSA's step 4 test explained: what counts as "past relevant work," the 5-year relevant work period, the 30-day rule, and how it can affect your claim.
- Proving You Can't Sustain Full-Time Work: Absences and Off-Task Time
Why unpredictable absences and off-task time often decide SSDI and SSI claims, and how to document them honestly with a diary, treatment records, and a medical source statement.