This report adds to current understanding of the extent to which disability-related barriers limit participation in society and provides an improved evidential basis for policy analysis currently being undertaken to develop new ways of reducing the barriers faced by people with disabilities. It will support future work to better understand the ways in which disability-related barriers are created and limit the lives of those affected.
Purpose
This paper describes the methodology and results of a study of the effects of disability on employment and benefit receipt. It also considers some of the policy implications of the findings.
Key Results
The results show that people with disabilities have a greatly diminished likelihood of full-time employment. However, the effect is much smaller when the outcome examined is any degree of employment (ie part-time or full-time employment). Those with a hearing disability experience a smaller negative effect in terms of employment outcomes than those with other types of disability, for whom the effects are approximately equal in size. The likelihood of employment diminishes sharply with the severity of disability for all of the disability types except hearing disability. For the latter type, employment does not seem to be very much affected by severity (to the extent that the severity of hearing disability is able to be assessed from the survey data).