Disability used to be, almost by definition, an aging story. The older you got, the more likely you were to report difficulty walking, seeing, or managing daily tasks. That assumption is now measurably wrong.

Among adults aged 25 to 44, any-disability prevalence rose from 15.0% in 2015 to 22.3% in 2024, a gain of nearly half again its starting level. Over the same period, the rate among adults 65 and older moved from 34.2% to 41.8%, an increase of about 7.6 percentage points. The working-age group gained 7.3 points from a much lower base, meaning its relative growth was roughly twice as fast.

Working-Age Disability Grew Faster in a Decade Than Most Analysts Expected

The gap between the two age groups has narrowed considerably. In 2015, adults 65 and older were 19.2 percentage points more likely to report any disability than adults 25 to 44. By 2024, that gap had closed to 19.5 points in absolute terms, but the trajectory of the younger group is what demands attention: it crossed 22% for the first time in 2023 and held there in 2024.

That 22.3% figure means roughly one in five working-age adults now reports at least one functional limitation. For employers, insurers, and state Medicaid programs, this is a materially different population than the one they were designing around a decade ago.

The 65-and-older group, by contrast, has been relatively stable since 2018. Any-disability prevalence among older adults peaked at 43.1% in 2018 and stood at 41.8% in 2024, a modest decline. The story of rising disability in America is no longer centered on the oldest adults.

Walking Difficulty Tells a More Complicated Story

Not every disability type is moving in the same direction among younger adults. Serious difficulty walking among adults 25 to 34 was 4.7% in 2014 and fell to 3.3% in 2020. Among adults 35 to 44, the rate dropped from 8.4% in 2014 to 6.5% in 2020. Meanwhile, serious difficulty walking among adults 65 and older held between 26.8% and 27.7% from 2015 through 2019, showing relative stability.

This divergence matters. If mobility-specific disability is declining among younger adults while overall any-disability prevalence is rising sharply, the growth is concentrated in other domains: cognitive difficulty, independent living, self-care, vision, or hearing. That points toward a different set of service needs than the physical rehabilitation and mobility-assistance infrastructure that dominates current disability support systems.

The Post-2019 Acceleration Is the Number That Requires Explanation

The trend didn't move in a straight line. Any disability among adults 25 to 44 stood at 18.6% in 2019, then reached 22.0% in 2023, a jump of 3.4 percentage points across that gap. The 2020 data point actually showed a slight dip to 17.5%, followed by the sharp move upward.

That 3.4-point increase between 2019 and 2023 accounts for nearly half of the entire 2015-to-2024 gain. Whether that acceleration reflects lasting health effects from the pandemic period, changes in how adults perceive and report functional limitations, or shifts in survey methodology is a question the data raises but cannot resolve on its own. What the data does resolve is the direction and magnitude: 22.3% of adults 25 to 44 reported any disability in 2024, up from 15.0% nine years earlier.

American disability infrastructure was built around the assumption that functional limitation is primarily a late-life condition. At current rates, that assumption is increasingly difficult to defend.