The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) compensates  veterans for service-connected disabilities, which are  medical conditions or injuries that occurred or worsened  during military service. In fiscal year 2022, those pay￾ments totaled $125 billion (in 2022 dollars), or roughly  45 percent of the department’s spending. That spending  has increased more than fourfold since fiscal year 2000.In previous reports, the Congressional Budget Office has  documented the growth in VA’s spending on disability  compensation and trends in veterans’ employment.1  In  this report, CBO explores the interaction of those two  topics, comparing the earnings, personal income, and  household income of working-age male veterans who  received VA disability payments with those of veterans  who did not receive such payments.2  The results allow  policymakers and others to compare the financial secu￾rity of veterans receiving disability payments with that  of veterans not receiving payments as a way to gauge the  importance of that compensation.