ILR News Center

Funded by a grant through ILR's Employment and Disability Institute, the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Employment Policy for Persons with Disabilities releases publications.

Long-term Poverty and Disability Among Working-age Adults, Research Brief

by Peiyun She and Gina A. Livermore, Cornell University Institute for Policy Research

Abstract:
We use longitudinal data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) spanning the 1996 to 1999 period to estimate the prevalence of short and long-term poverty among working-age people with and without disabilities. Several alternative measures of disability are used, including measures of long-term disability. Depending on the disability measure used, annual poverty rates are two to five times higher among working-age people with disabilities compared to their counterparts without disabilities, with poverty rates highest among those with more severe and longer-term disabilities -- 1997 annual poverty rates ranged from 10 to 32 percent among people with disabilities, compared to six percent among those without disabilities. The prevalence of chronic (i.e., long-term) poverty is lower for all groups, but the prevalence of chronic poverty among those with disabilities relative to those without disabilities is much higher than the relative prevalence of short-term poverty, especially for those experiencing disability over a long period. At the extreme, those reporting work limitations for more than 36 months during the 48-month period were 14 times more likely to have incomes below the poverty line in all 48 months than those with no work limitation.

We also estimate disability prevalence among those in poverty and find that people with disabilities make up a very large share of the working-age poverty population, especially when long-term measures of poverty are used. People with disabilities represented about 47 percent of those in poverty in 1997 when an annual measure of poverty is used; when a longer-term poverty measure is used, 65 percent of those in poverty for at least 36 months of the 48-month period have a disability.

Despite the fact that disability is an extremely important risk factor for long-term poverty among working-age adults, it often receives little attention in the poverty literature and policy efforts to alleviate poverty. One reason may be that most statistics are based on short-term poverty and disability measures, which partially mask the strong relationship between long-term poverty and long-term disability. Another reason may be outdated perceptions of the relationship between disability and the ability to work.

Suggested Citation:
She, P., and Livermore, G. (2006) Long-term Poverty and Disability Among Working-age Adults; Research Brief, Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Employment Policy for Persons with Disabilities, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.

Material Hardship, Poverty, and Disability among Working-age Adults, Research Brief

by Peiyun She and Gina A. Livermore, Cornell University Institute for Policy Research

Abstract:
We use longitudinal data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) spanning the 1996 to 1999 period to estimate the prevalence of several types of material hardships among working-age people with and without disabilities. The hardships studied relate to: the ability to meet expenses; ability to pay rent or mortgage and utility bills; ability to obtain needed medical and dental care; and food security. Several alternative measures of disability are used, including distinctions between short and long-term disability. We find that, regardless of the disability measure used, people with disabilities experience various kinds of material hardship at substantially higher rates than their counterparts without disabilities. Hardship experiences did not differ dramatically between those with short and long-term disabilities.

We estimate logit models of the likelihood of reporting material hardships to assess the importance of disability after controlling for income and other sociodemographic characteristics. We find that disability is an important determinant of material hardship even after controlling for these factors. All else constant, the odds of reporting hardship are 70 to 280 percent greater among people with disabilities compared with people without disabilities, depending on the measure of disability and the specific hardship considered. To illustrate the differences between those with and without disabilities from another perspective, we use the logit estimates to calculate the household income individuals with disabilities would need to attain the same likelihood of reporting a given material hardship as those without disabilities with household income at the official poverty level. We find that people with disabilities living alone would need annual incomes on the order of $18,000 to $38,000 to experience the same level of hardship, on average, as those without disabilities with incomes at the poverty level (about $10,000), depending on the nature of the disability and the hardship considered.

We also estimate disability prevalence among working-age people with incomes at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level and reporting hardships. A large majority of the low-income respondents reporting a material hardship in 1998 also reported a disability of some sort between 1996 and 1999. Among the hardships studied, people with disabilities made up the largest shares of those not getting needed medical care (64 percent) and those reporting food insecurity with hunger (72 percent).

The findings suggest that comparisons of conventional poverty rates for people with and without disabilities may understate the differences in the relative economic well-being of these two populations. At a given level of income, people with disabilities will not, on average, achieve the same level of material well-being as those without disabilities. The findings provide support for policies that account for disability-related expenditures and needs when determining eligibility for means-tested assistance programs. The findings also highlight an important limitation of the official poverty measure; it overstates the economic relative well-being of a group that represents a large share of the low-income population, people with disabilities.