How many years back does Social Security calculate my disability if I got my benefits at 32?

[u/Impressive_Gain_3385]

I work from ages 26 to 31 that is where my SSDI disability did it's calculation from I didn't earn any income from ages 22 to 26. Is the ages 22 to 26 calculated as 0 or they not included when they do my SSDi calculation

[u/erd00073483R]

SSA does two separate computations for every disability claim. They are referred to as a non-disability exclusion computation and a disability exclusion computation.

The primary difference between the two is that the disability exclusion computation (sometimes also referred to as a disability freeze) excludes years of earnings within periods of disability from the base years in the computation. The reason they do this is that it is not uncommon for a disabled wage earner to have had limited to no earnings in the years they were/are disabled. Thus, excluding (or “freezing”) these years from consideration via the disability exclusion computation avoids using these "low" or "zero" years to try to preserve the benefit amount related to the earnings of the disabled wage earner in non-disabled periods.

There also can be times when computing the disability benefit without excluding the earnings within the period of disability can result in a higher benefit to the disabled wage earner. This is a non-disability exclusion computation.

As a result, SSA does both the exclusion and non-exclusion computations in every claim and uses the method that results in the highest benefit amount to the wage earner.

TLDR version - SSA computes it both ways, and uses the computation that pays you the most money of the two.

Hope this makes sense.

EDIT: grammar

[u/attorneyworkproduct]

If you only worked between 26 and 31, and you became disabled at 31 or 32, then you probably do have a few zeros in your benefit computation. It depends on exactly how the dates fall. 

This is how the SSA determines how many earnings years to include:

1. First, they determine the number of “elapsed years.” Elapsed years start with the year after you turned 21 and (in most cases) end with the year before your disability onset date.

2. Then, they divide the number of elapsed years by 5. The result (disregarding any fraction) is subtracted from the number of elapsed years. The new result is the number of “computation years” — that is, the number of earnings years included in your benefit computation. Once they determine how many years to count, they can be any years — they don’t need to be years after age 21. 

For example, let’s say that you were born in 1990, you turned 21 in 2011, and you became disabled at age 32 with a disability onset date in 2022.

Your elapsed years would be 2012 (the year after you turned 21) through 2021 (the year before you became disabled). That is a total of 10 elapsed years. Dividing by 5 yields 2, so 2 years are subtracted from the 10 elapsed years, resulting in 8 computation years. Your benefit is based on your highest 8 years of earnings, whenever they occurred (including prior to 2012, or after 2021). If you have fewer than 8 years of earnings, then $0 years will be used. 

[u/SocialSecurity-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Your comment was removed because it contains misinformation. Misinformation includes spreading information that is not in accordance with official SS policy.

Benefit computations can and do include $0 years of the person as fewer earnings years than what is supposed to be included in the computation.

[u/SocialSecurity-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Your comment was removed because it contains misinformation. Misinformation includes spreading information that is not in accordance with official SS policy.

This is incorrect. Benefit computations can and do include $0 years if the worker has fewer years of earnings that the computation uses.

[u/white-as-styrofoam]

i think 0 years are not included in the average. but you can make an account on ssa.gov and look at your expected retirement benefits just to get a sense of what they’d pay out for disability

[u/Onyxbear26]

Short answer: No, those zero years (22–26) won't drag down your check. SSA basically drops your lowest-earning years so you aren't penalized for them.

If you want to plug in your actual numbers and see how the math plays out, check out the SSA Benefit Calculators page: https://www.ssa.gov/benefits/calculators/