Rising Poverty in the Midst of Plenty: The Case of Working-Age People with Disabilities

Rising Poverty in the Midst of Plenty: The Case of Working-Age People with Disabilities Richard V. Burkhauser Department of Policy Analysis and Management Cornell University Andrew J. Houtenville Industrial and Labor Relations Cornell University Ludmila Rovba Analysis Group, Inc. Montreal, Canada Partial funding for the work reported in this paper came from the United States Department of Education, National Institute of Disability and Rehabilitation Research, cooperative agreement No. 1331390038. This paper does not necessarily reflect the views of the National Institute of Disability and Rehabilitation Research.

“When you can not measure, your knowledge is meager and unsatisfactory”—Lord Kelvin. (Chiseled on the archway of the University of Chicago Social Science Building)

Six questions this talk will answer with respect to working-age people with disabilities: • What was their poverty rate in 2004? • How sensitive is this measure across data sets and definitions of the population? • What is their relative risk of poverty? • How has their relative risk of poverty changed over the last two major business cycles? • What explains these changes in their poverty rate (compositional changes or underlying changes)? • How has the compositionally adjusted change in their relative risk of poverty changed?

Figure 1: Median Family Income and Poverty Rate of Families and Persons, 1979-2005

Table 1. Relative Poverty Risk for Selected Economically Vulnerable Working-Aged Populations

Table 2: Estimated Disability Prevalence Rates for Working-Age People with Disabilities (Men and Women, Aged 25 to 61), By Data Source

Table 2: Estimated Disability Poverty Rates for Working-Age People with Disabilities (Men and Women, Aged 25 to 61), By Data Source

Table 3: Relative Poverty Risk of Those With Disabilities by Sex, Education, Race, and Age

Table 4: Decomposition of the Percentage Point Change in Poverty Rate of Those Reporting Work Limitation, by Changes in Absolute Population Shares

Table 5: Actual and Compositionally Adjusted Poverty Rates for Working-Age People With and Without Disabilities

Figure 2. Trends in the Ratio of Actual and Compositionally Adjusted Relative Poverty Rates of People With Work Limitations, 1980-2005

Conclusions • The compositionally adjusted poverty rate of working-age people with disabilities has grown over time. • Their compositionally adjusted relative risk of poverty has grown even more over time. • OMB should choose a method of capturing poverty rate levels and trends of working-age people by disability status. • Those interested in tracking their economic well-being should find a way to link longer-term CPS-based trends to those found with better data as it becomes available.

Rising Poverty in the Midst of Plenty: The Case of Working-Age People with Disabilities