In March, 7.4 million people collected Supplemental Security Income (S.S.I.) benefits; 84% of them were eligible because of a disability. Rather than keeping people with disabilities above the poverty line, S.S.I. restrictions are preventing them from leading independent lives and marrying, writes Pepper Stetler, professor of Art History and associate director of the Miami University Humanities Center. 

“S.S.I. asset and income limits need to be raised and marriage penalties should be eliminated,” said Stetler, author of the forthcoming book, “A Measure of Intelligence: One Mother’s Reckoning With the I.Q. Test.”

“These rules send the message that those with disabilities have to choose between help with living independently and their freedom as adult Americans to marry, to make decisions about where they live and to earn a living wage. The current system won’t allow them to have both,” Stetler writes. 

Read her article  “Disabled Adults Shouldn’t Have to Pay This Price to Marry” in the New York Times (May 12).