New Research Documents Disability and Economic Injustice

October 02, 2024

Contact:Peter Hart, 732-266-4932Mail_Outline

Report sheds light on how status quo fails to deliver security and dignity

WASHINGTON, DC - A comprehensive new report documents the array of socioeconomic challenges faced by disabled people in the United States, providing a broad overview of the relationship between disability and economic injustice.

The Disability and Economic Justice Chartbook, released by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), highlights the intersection between disability and race, ethnicity, gender, and geography, providing a data-driven starting point for assessing the issues faced by disabled people across the country.

Among the key findings:

-Disabled people in the US working full time earned just 83 cents for every dollar earned by non-disabled workers.

- The poverty rate for disabled working-age adults was more than double the rate for those without disabilities. Disabled adults were also almost three times as likely to report food insecurity, and almost twice as likely to struggle with day-to-day expenses. Those issues were more serious for Black and Latino people living with disabilities, two-thirds of whom reported difficulty with expenses, and over 30 percent of whom were food insecure.

- Disabled people are two times as likely to experience transportation insecurity (40 percent to 19 percent) than non-disabled people.

- Disabled people are much more likely to skip medical care due to costs than non-disabled people (21 percent vs 6 percent between the ages of 45 and 64).

- Compared to their peers with higher incomes, low-income disabled women of reproductive age were more likely to live in states that restrict access to abortions.

- Over a quarter of disabled workers' requests for accommodations were not fully honored by their employers.

- Disabled people reported lower levels of disaster preparedness compared to their counterparts without disabilities. Even after controlling for other characteristics, nearly 20 percent of adults with disabilities said they were not prepared at all for an emergency, compared to only 15 percent of people without disabilities.

"The struggle for economic justice must include a demand for disability justice," said CEPR Research Associate Hayley Brown. "The economic injustices that disabled people face are rooted in the same systems that marginalize them socially and politically. We must document how these issues intersect, and work to find policy solutions that will deliver economic security and dignity for all."

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