U.S. Newswire, October 4, 2006, Wednesday

U.S. Newswire

Dramatic Gap between Working-Age People With and Without Disabilities in Employment and Poverty
10/4/2006 10:00:00 AM
http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=73738

To: National Desk
Contact: Andrew J. Houtenville, 607-255-5702 or 607-227-8545

WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A dramatic 40.2 percent employment gap separates working-age people with and without disabilities in the workforce, Cornell University researchers reported today.

The finding, which coincides with National Disability Awareness Month, is part of a series of reports released by Cornell University in collaboration with the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD).

The report states that 38.1 percent of people with disabilities are employed, compared with 78.3 percent of people without disabilities, making a gap of 40.2 percentage points. There are 21,455,000 people with disabilities of working age (21- 64), 12.6 percent of the total working age population.

"The employment gap between people with and without disabilities is long-standing. There is evidence that it is growing, and that people with disabilities are not participating in the recovery from the 2001 recession," said Andrew Houtenville, director of Cornell's Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Disability Demographics and Statistics (StatsRRTC).

The researchers found that the poverty gap is 15.4 percent; that is 24.6 percent of working-age Americans with disabilities live in poverty compared with 9.3 percent of those without disabilities.

The report also noted that people with disabilities constitute 27.6 percent of the working-age American population living in poverty.

This second Annual Disability Status Report, containing a range of statistics about people with disabilities, including statistics by state, is available online at http://www.DisabilityStatistics.org

The reports, which will be issued yearly at the beginning of October by Cornell, "fill a pressing need for timely and relevant statistics about people with disabilities for policy-makers, advocates and the media," said Houtenville.

The Disability Status Reports use the American Community Survey - the public-use version of the raw data that the Census Bureau uses in its report. Because of revisions by the Census Bureau to compensate for problems in the collection of Census 2000 data, the new ACS data are not comparable to data used to measure employment and poverty among people with disabilities in 2004.

The StatsRRTC is the statistics arm of three Cornell units: the Employment and Disability Institute in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, the Institute for Policy Research located in Washington, D.C., and the Department of Policy Analysis and Management in the College of Human Ecology. It is funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research.

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