Circles USA salutes Disability Pride Month, a campaign launched to commemorate the original passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act in July 1990. As organizations like AmeriDisability have noted, Disability Pride Month honors “the largest and most diverse minority group within the population, representing all abilities, ages, races, ethnicities, religions and socio-economic backgrounds.” Further, “[b]ecause at least 1-in-4 adults in the United States has some type of disability, it’s no surprise that a movement of ‘disability pride’ is emerging and rapidly expanding.” [Source]
Since its inception 25+ years ago, Circles has focused care at the intersection of disability justice and economic justice. CUSA affirms that people everywhere, at every physical and mental capacity, deserve dignity, community, and the chance to move from surviving to thriving. In this two-part series, we’ll highlight important data around workers with disabilities and amplify our disability network’s best resources for building more equitable, accessible job pathways and benefits systems throughout the U.S.
Systems, Not People, Are Broken
Disability is often viewed as arbitrary, striking “unlucky” people at random; or deserved, impacting people who “invite” misfortune or ill health by making “poor life decisions.” The truth is that mass-disabling social systems impact most people to some extent. More economically vulnerable communities experience greater exposure to these systems and have fewer mitigating factors (e.g., mental and physical healthcare access; fair labor and environmental regulations; safe jobs; avenues to recovery and rehabilitation programs; nutritional information and healthy, unprocessed foods) to offset harm. Thus, certain demographics are disabled at greater rates and experience worse health outcomes than others. Race, for example, “is linked to poverty and disability in America: African Americans as a group continue to have lower incomes than whites and poorer health status than whites.” [Source]
Unfortunately, even bipartisan efforts to enact policies which intersectionally address class, race, gender, and ability often compound obstacles. The National Disability Institute writes in Financial Inequality: Disability, Race and Poverty in America that,
…[w]hile disability and poverty have an interactive effect, our social service system treats them separately. For example, disability benefits (including health coverage) are often hinged on proving one is incapable of work, but anti-poverty programs often have a work requirement [emphasis added]. Thus, people with disabilities attempting to avoid poverty often face difficult choices. Is it preferable to leave the labor market and qualify for disability benefits or work at whatever level possible and receive wages and perhaps qualify for food stamps or the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)?”
In this way, people who seek relief from disability-related financial crises can trigger income crises similar to those of the Cliff Effect. “Disability adversely affects employment possibilities and earning,” the study’s authors write. “It also can impose additional costs on families, such as medical bills, transportation, modifications to their home and personal assistants.”
Poverty, the study further establishes, actually causes disability. Children living in poverty “are more likely to have asthma, chronic illness, environmental trauma such as lead poisoning, learning problems and low birth weight that lead to disabilities.” Moreover, “[p]eople in more physically demanding jobs [e.g., food service and custodial work] are also more likely to suffer workplace illnesses and injuries.”
On the topic of Disability & Socioeconomic Status, the American Psychological Association reports that people with disabilities remain widely underemployed:
“Although the Americans with Disabilities Act assures equal opportunities in education and employment for people with disabilities and prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability, people with disabilities remain overrepresented among America’s poor and undereducated [emphasis added]. According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s [2017] Office of Disability Employment Policy, the labor force participation rate for people with disabilities (including physical, intellectual and developmental, sensory, and other disability categories) aged 16 and over is 20.1 percent as compared to 68.6 percent for people without disabilities of the same age. Disabilities among children and adults may affect the socioeconomic standing of entire families. In 2015, roughly 38,601,898 people in the United States had a disability” (U.S. Census Bureau, 2015).
By 2023, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, “employment-population ratio for people with a disability [had] increased by 1.2 percentage points to 22.5 percent. The employment-population ratio for people with a disability in 2023 was the highest recorded ratio since comparable data were first collected in 2008.” [Source]
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During Disability Pride Month and every month, Circles USA is committed to our mission of building community to end poverty through intentional friendships, personal transformation, and systemic change led by the people closest to the challenge.
If you found this post useful, stay tuned for Pt. 2 later in July. We’ll explore more areas of overlap among disability, poverty, and other social factors; we’ll also provide media and resources to grow Circles chapters’ capacity to collaborate with our local disability communities.
Click the Give to Circles button and help us celebrate 25 years of extraordinary volunteers building community to end poverty!