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NCD Recommends Improving Federal Data Describing the Status of Americans with Disabilities

NEWS RELEASE
NCD #08–560
April 21, 2008
Contact: Mark S. Quigley
202-272-2004

National Council on Disability Recommends Improving Federal Data Describing the Status of Americans with Disabilities

WASHINGTON—The National Council on Disability (NCD) today released Keeping Track: National Disability Status and Program Performance Indicators, calling on the Federal Government to do more now to improve federal data describing the status of Americans with disabilities.

This report is the result of a year-long effort. It describes what is known about the status of people with disabilities in the United States, and examines current data to assess the extent to which they meaningfully measure the well-being of people with disabilities.

According to NCD Chairperson John R. Vaughn, “There is much we do not know about the lives of people with disabilities. Currently, the statistics informing the policy debate are predominantly economic, such as employment and household income. Such statistics are helpful, but paint only part of the picture. Other quality of life dimensions are substantially overlooked. Although some surveys cover topics that are related to some aspects of well-being, such as income, assets, or health insurance status, they do not necessarily reflect other aspects of well-being as they would be defined by the target population.”

“During the past 30 years, advocates, policymakers, and a variety of public and private organizations have undertaken significant efforts to improve the lives of people with disabilities, culminating in the passage or improvement of legislation such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), various sections of the Rehabilitation Act, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Improvement Act, and others. Notwithstanding these various policies, little effort and progress has been made to measure and reflect upon the overall effectiveness and performance of these laws and policies, and their impacts on the quality of life for people with disabilities,” Vaughn concluded.

NCD’s previous 2004 research also reported that the incidence of disability is rising in the under Age 65 population. And, while it has decreased slightly for seniors, it will begin to rise sharply as the current senior population of 34 million doubles over the next 20 years.

In 2005, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) conducted a review of 200 federal programs that served people with disabilities located in 20 agencies. It identified the need to transform many of the programs it reviewed to keep pace with the changing expectations and challenges of the 21st century. In addition, most participants at a 2007 GAO forum on modernizing disability programs agreed that multiple indicators were needed to measure the success of disability programs and that these measures should include not only economic measures such as income and employment, but quality of life measures as well.

Keeping Track: National Disability Status and Program Performance Indicators includes a set of statistical social indicators that NCD believes are currently able to measure the progress of people with disabilities in important areas of their life, over time. The report includes 18 indicators determined by stakeholders to measure “quality of life” using both objective and subjective measures. The indicators span a variety of life domains, including employment, education, health status and health care, financial status and security, leisure and recreation, personal relationships, and crime and safety. Collectively they will create a holistic representation of the lives of people with disabilities.

Consequently, NCD recommends the following:

Recommendation 1: The National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) establish and fund a coalition of disability policy makers and advocates to: 1) develop a more robust set of indicators that are important to people with disabilities, building on the indicators outlined in this report; and 2) ensure that disability is included as a demographic subgroup as the Key National Indicators Initiative is developed. 

Recommendation 2: Promote a standard set of disability questions.

Recommendation 3: Fully disseminate disability data.

Recommendation 4: Administrative records of all means-tested programs should include a disability indicator.

Recommendation 5: Expand the Job Training Common Indicators.

NCD is an independent federal agency and is composed of 15 members appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. We provide advice to the President, Congress, and executive branch agencies to promote policies, programs, practices, and procedures that guarantee equal opportunity for all individuals with disabilities, regardless of the nature or severity of the disability; and empower individuals with disabilities to achieve economic self-sufficiency, independent living, and inclusion and integration into all aspects of society.

For more information, please contact NCD’s Director of External Affairs Mark S. Quigley at mquigley@ncd.gov or 202-272-2004 or visit www.ncd.gov.

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A Troublesome Decline in Federal Disability Hiring

From The Washington Post (1/17):

A Troublesome Decline in Disability Hiring

By Stephen Barr

Most federal agencies are losing more employees with severe disabilities than they are hiring, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission wants to get the government back on path as a model employer.

An EEOC management directive, which went into effect in October 2003, requires federal agencies with more than 1,000 employees to recruit disabled individuals and set hiring goals, but 43 percent of federal agencies have not established such goals, the EEOC said in a report released Tuesday.

"This may account for why little progress is being realized," the report said.

In fiscal 2006, the government had about 2.6 million permanent and temporary workers, and 24,442 were deaf, blind, mentally retarded or had other serious disabilities...

...Read the rest of the article.

EEOC: Federal Government Unwelcome Workplace for Disabled

From Federal Times (1/16):

EEOC faults efforts to hire people with disabilities

By Stephen Losey

The federal government is becoming an increasingly unwelcome place for people with disabilities to work, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said Jan. 15.

Employment of people with disabilities hit its lowest point in 22 years in fiscal 2006, the EEOC said. Data for 2007 is not yet available. The federal government employed 23,490 disabled people in fiscal 2006, which is about 0.97 percent of the federal work force. At the peak in 1994, 1.24 percent of the federal work force was disabled. At the lowest point in 1984, about 0.96 percent of the federal work force was disabled.

At the same time, harassment complaints have steadily increased since 2003. Disabled employees filed 1,393 harassment complaints in fiscal 2003 and filed 1,602 complaints in 2006...

...Read the rest of this article.

Employment Gap between Working-Age People with and without Disabilities Continues

SOURCE: Cornell's Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on
Disability
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WASHINGTON, Nov. 7 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A dramatic 42 percent
employment gap separates working-age people with and without disabilities
in the workforce, Cornell University researchers reported today.

The report states that 37.7 percent of people with disabilities are
employed, compared with 79.7 percent of people without disabilities, making
a gap of 42 percentage points. There are 22,382,000 people with
disabilities of working age (21-64), 12.9 percent of the total working age
population.

The finding is part of an ongoing series of reports released by Cornell
University in collaboration with the American Association of People with
Disabilities (AAPD).

"The longstanding employment gap between people with and without
disabilities appears to be getting wider. People with disabilities are not
keeping pace in this economy. This employment gap has severe consequences
for poverty. People with disabilities are much more likely to live in
poverty," 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 15.9 percent, that is
25.4 percent of working-age Americans with disabilities live in poverty
compared with 9.5 percent of those without disabilities. The report also
noted that people with disabilities constitute 28.4 percent of the
working-age American population living in poverty.

This Third 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 in the Fall 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.

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.