Poverty Trends and Influencing Factors for People with Disabilities in the 2010s

Abstract

Our analysis of trends in the poverty rate and their influencing factors, conducted using data from the Survey of Household Finances and Living Conditions, revealed that the disposable-income poverty rate for disabled persons declined from 47.0 percent in 2012 to 43.0 percent in 2016. In the years 2016 through 2020, a period examined based on combined data—survey data supplemented with administrative records—the disposable-income poverty rate declined from 40.7 percent to 39.6 percent. Despite the continuous expansion of public transfers, disabled people did not see their disposable-income poverty rate fall all that much because of the increase in their market-income poverty rate. Our in-depth examination revealed that the rise in the market-income poverty rate among disabled people can be attributed to changes in their sociodemographic composition. These changes included aging, an increasing share of one-person households, and a declining proportion of disabled individuals cohabitating with non-disabled family members.