Listing of Impairments

The Listing of Impairments is the regulatory catalog of medical conditions that SSA considers severe enough to prevent substantial gainful activity when specific criteria are met. Published in the appendix to SSA's disability regulations and reproduced in the Blue Book, the adult listings are organized into 14 body systems, with a separate set of listings for children.

Each listing specifies required medical findings, such as test results, imaging, symptom patterns, or documented functional deficits. A claimant whose evidence meets, or medically equals, a listing is found disabled at step three without any consideration of age, education, or work history. Because listing criteria are strict, most approvals happen instead at step five, but a listing-level argument should always be evaluated first.