The Social Security Administration has abandoned plans to block thousands of older Americans from qualifying for disability benefits after an uproar that reached senior officials in the Trump White House, according to people familiar with the decision.

The agency is also halting a plan to use modern labor market data to help judge whether disability claimants can work, a project that has cost the federal government more than $350 million so far. The new data would have replaced a long-outdated jobs database that until recently included obsolete occupations such as nut sorters and telephone quotation clerks.

The policy affecting older people would have fundamentally altered who qualifies for the two federal disability programs by eliminating or limiting a person's age as a factor to consi

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