VA Disability Compensation: Disability Ratings May Not Reflect Veterans' Economic Losses

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information that would enable the subcommittee to assess the need for a comprehensive study of the economic validity of the Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) disability rating schedule, focusing on: (1) the basis for the disability ratings assigned to conditions in the current schedule; (2) socioeconomic changes that have occurred since the original version of the schedule was developed that may have influenced the earning capacity of disabled veterans; (3) the results of a previous study that examined the validity of ratings in the schedule; (4) VA's efforts to help ensure that the ratings do reflect disabled veterans' average impairment in earning capacity; and (5) the advantage of basing ratings in the schedule on actual loss in earnings, and approaches that could be used to estimate this loss.