Professor Berthoud’s new analysis of the experiences of disabled people, Diversity Disability is based on the recent Life Opportunities Survey. Among 18,621 adults (aged 20-59) interviewed, one fifth (4811) reported at least one impairment which was at least moderate in its impact and limited the person’s activities at least sometimes.
Professor Berthoud said:
“It is a mistake to think of all disabled people as a single group facing similar disadvantages. It is equally a mistake to divide disabled people of working age simply into those who are capable and incapable of work. People face a far wider range of experiences than either of those simplifications implies.”
“Fifty per cent of the sample of these disabled people were in work – but if you take account of demographic characteristics such as gender, family structure, age, education and ethnic group, our analysis shows that 73 per cent of them would have been in work if they had experienced no disadvantage associated with their impairments. So the average “disability employment penalty” was 23 percentage points.”
But the penalty varied widely, depending on the detailed characteristics of people’s impairments.
• Disabled people with poor educational qualifications were more disadvantaged than well-educated disabled people, even after taking account of the penalty already associated with low levels of education.
• People who could not perform some tasks at all, and who were affected all the time, were more disadvantaged than those with less severe or less frequent limitations on their activities.
• Mental health conditions, limited mobility and behavioural problems were associated with higher penalties than other impairments.
• The more impairments a respondent reported, the less likely they were to have a job.
• Those who reported impairments for just one year out of three years were not disadvantaged at all. Those who were disabled three years running suffered most.
Taking account of a combination of these factors, it was possible to calculate a personal employment penalty for each member of the sample. About a third faced marginal penalties of up to 10 percentage points and should perhaps not be considered “disabled” at all.
The top third faced penalties of between 35 and 68 percentage points, many of whom might be considered “incapable” of work. In between there was a group with serious but not forbidding penalties. This “50:50” group may be the primary focus of policy interest.
Professor Berthoud has written about his research for Society Central – our evidence for policymakers site. Read his article here and download the full paper here.