Disability demographics
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Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1]
Demographics
Difficulties in measuring
The demography of disability is difficult. Counting persons with disabilities is far more challenging than is counting males. That is because disability is not just a status condition, entirely contained within the individual. Rather, it is an interaction between medical status (say, having low vision or being blind) and the environment.
Estimates worldwide
Estimates of worldwide and country-wide numbers of individuals with disabilities are problematic. The varying approaches taken to defining disability notwithstanding, demographers agree that the world population of individuals with disabilities is very large. The World Health Organization, for example, estimates that there are as many as 600 million persons with disabilities. The United Nations estimate is 650 million. In the United States, for example, Americans with disabilities constitute the third-largest minority (after persons of Hispanic origin and African Americans); all three of those minority groups number in the 30-some millions in America. According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, as of 2004, there were some 32 million adults (aged 18 or over) in the United States, plus another 5 million children and youth (under age 18). If one were to add impairments -- or limitations that fall short of being disabilities -- Census estimates put the figure at 51 million.
There is also widespread agreement among experts in the field that disability is more common in developing than in developed nations.