Disaggregating Disability

The principal topics in the assessment of equalization of opportunities include disaggregation by sex, age, place of residence, type of household, marital status, educational attainment and school attendance, labour-force status, employment, industry, and occupation, among others.  

Identifying the prevalence of disability is a first step. The next step is to determine if outcomes for persons with disabilities are different from that of their non-disabled counterparts by asking questions such as: Are persons with disabilities less likely to get married? To get educated? To find employment? More likely to be victims of violence? In order to answer such questions, we need to disaggregate outcome indicators by disability status: without disability and with disability.

Only when persons with disabilities have been identified using the WG-SS is it possible to compare the employment rate of people with and without disabilities. A society that is entirely inclusive would reveal no gaps in employment. However, if persons with disabilities faced barriers to employment, their employment rates would be lower than those with no disabilities as in the hypothetical example in Figure 1.

Figure 1.  Proportion of employed people with and without disabilities

Estimation of the proportion of employed people with and without disabilities: with disability almost 30%, without disability almost 80%.

Since the disability gap probably differs by sex, age and region of residence, it is important to look not only at the overall gap, but at the gap for various sub-populations. For example, the possibility of having a disability increases greatly from approximately the age of 50.  

Disability rates can also vary a great deal by geographic region, maybe because of differences in the exposure to diseases, traffic, conflict, or a variety of causes that can be region specific.  In addition, disability varies by sex because sex and disability can interact in ways that magnify the barriers that both disabled people and women, in general, face.

The results may show that the gap for school attendance between children with and without disabilities is bigger for girls than it is for boys.  It also may show the gap in marriage rates for persons with disabilities is bigger in rural areas than it is in urban areas.