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Costs Incurred by People with Disabilities

A special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601). This special issue belongs to the section "Disabilities".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2023) | Viewed by 11272

Special Issue Editor

Center for Inclusive Policy, 1450 Church Street, NW Unit 602, Washington, DC 20005, USA
Interests: disability; socioeconomic policies; social protection; disability data
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The growing body of evidence showing the strong correlation between disability and poverty underestimates the true impact of disability on the lives of people with disabilities and their families. Poverty lines are drawn with some notion of meeting a minimum level of basic needs. However, people with disabilities have additional needs that generate extra costs of living, both on special expenditures such as assistive technology and personal supports and also on general items such as medical care and transportation. Not accounting for these costs thus overestimates their well-being relative to households without members with disabilities. This Special Issue will explore various approaches to measuring these costs, the amount and types of expenditures currently being made as well as those needed for equal participation, and the implication of accounting for these costs in analyzing the impact of disability on people’s social and economic well-being and designing policies that take these costs into account.

Dr. Daniel Mont
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • disability
  • social protection
  • poverty
  • extra costs
  • inclusion

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

12 pages, 1701 KiB  
Article
Out-of-Pocket Health Expenditures Associated with Chronic Health Conditions and Disability in China
by Jingyi Gao, Hoolda Kim and Sophie Mitra
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2023, 20(15), 6465; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20156465 - 27 Jul 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1471
Abstract
The objective of this study is to estimate the extra costs of living associated with chronic health conditions and disabilities in China. Leveraging the 2018 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study involving 13,530 respondents aged 50 and over, we apply both an ordinary [...] Read more.
The objective of this study is to estimate the extra costs of living associated with chronic health conditions and disabilities in China. Leveraging the 2018 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study involving 13,530 respondents aged 50 and over, we apply both an ordinary least squares linear regression model and a logistic model to analyze the correlation between medical out-of-pocket expenditures (OOPEs) and chronic health conditions, as well as disabilities measured by Activities of Daily Living (ADL) and Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADL) limitations. This paper bridges the gap in the literature on OOPEs and their association with disabilities and chronic health conditions, respectively. We find that ADL limitations, IADL limitations, and chronic health conditions are consistently associated with higher OOPEs. The odds that older persons with disabilities and chronic health conditions incur OOPEs are two to three times higher than for persons without disabilities and chronic health conditions, respectively. Persons with disabilities and chronic health conditions have the highest OOPEs. The findings suggest that more policy and research attention is necessary to improve the financial protection of those with chronic health conditions and disabilities, including through access to comprehensive health insurance coverage. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Costs Incurred by People with Disabilities)
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18 pages, 784 KiB  
Article
Disability-Related Costs of Children with Disabilities in the Philippines
by Ludovico Carraro, Alex Robinson, Bilal Hakeem, Abner Manlapaz and Rosela Agcaoili
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2023, 20(13), 6304; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20136304 - 6 Jul 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 4915
Abstract
The assessment of disability-related costs among children remains a largely under-researched subject with related questions rarely included in surveys. This paper addresses this issue through a unique mixed methods study conducted in the Philippines combining a nationally representative survey and in-depth interviews with [...] Read more.
The assessment of disability-related costs among children remains a largely under-researched subject with related questions rarely included in surveys. This paper addresses this issue through a unique mixed methods study conducted in the Philippines combining a nationally representative survey and in-depth interviews with families and health professionals. To quantify the extra costs associated with disabilities, the research used the standard of living approach, whereby expenditure levels of families with children with and without disabilities were compared in relation to different measures of living standards. The results find consistent evidence of high extra costs among households that have children with disabilities and point to health expenses as the leading source. Using an asset index as the indicator of living standards, a child with a disability is estimated to require between 40% and 80% extra expenditure to reach the same living standard of other children. However, the size of extra costs is substantially higher when the measure of the standard of living relies on a broader set of deprivations. In such cases, higher estimates of extra costs are likely to be the result of the lack of an inclusive environment. Critically, this points to the need to provide not only financial support but also inclusive services, especially in health and education. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Costs Incurred by People with Disabilities)
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15 pages, 2344 KiB  
Article
Multidimensional Measures and the Extra Costs of Disability: How Are They Related?
by Mónica Pinilla-Roncancio
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2023, 20(3), 2729; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20032729 - 3 Feb 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1910
Abstract
People with disabilities are more likely than individuals without disabilities to face higher levels of deprivation and multidimensional poverty, and those deprivations might be associated with the extra costs of living with a disability. However, there has not been an analysis of how [...] Read more.
People with disabilities are more likely than individuals without disabilities to face higher levels of deprivation and multidimensional poverty, and those deprivations might be associated with the extra costs of living with a disability. However, there has not been an analysis of how multidimensional poverty measures are related to the extra costs of disability or whether these measures can be used as a proxy of the standard of living in the analysis of the extra costs of disability. This paper aims to analyse whether multidimensional poverty measures can be used to study the extra costs of disability and, based on the capability approach, how multidimensional poverty is related to the extra costs of disability. This paper discusses theoretical, technical, and methodological aspects to be considered when studying the relationship between extra costs and multidimensional poverty, and we used data from Chile and Nigeria to illustrate this relationship. We conclude that when analysing the extra costs of disability, multidimensional measures might be an option; however, it is necessary to clearly stablish the relationship among income, deprivation, and the extra costs of disability. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Costs Incurred by People with Disabilities)
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17 pages, 484 KiB  
Article
Estimating Households’ Expenditures on Disability in Africa: The Uses and Limitations of the Standard of Living Method
by Daniel Mont, Zachary Morris, Mercoledi Nasiir and Nanette Goodman
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022, 19(23), 16069; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph192316069 - 1 Dec 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1865
Abstract
People with disabilities face extra costs of living to participate in the social and economic lives of their communities on an equal basis with people without disabilities. If these extra costs are not accounted for, then their economic wellbeing will be overestimated. The [...] Read more.
People with disabilities face extra costs of living to participate in the social and economic lives of their communities on an equal basis with people without disabilities. If these extra costs are not accounted for, then their economic wellbeing will be overestimated. The Standard of Living (SOL) method is a way of generating these estimates and is thus useful for determining the economic impact of those costs in the current environment. However, previous studies have used different indicators for disability and different measures of the standard of living, so it is hard to compare estimates across different countries. This study applies a consistent set of indicators across seven African countries to produce comparable estimates. Our estimates of the extra costs of living in these lower-income countries are much lower than the results produced for higher-income countries in prior work. We argue that this finding highlights the limitations of the SOL method as a useful source of information for developing inclusive systems of social protection in lower-income countries because it captures what households spend but not what the person with a disability needs to fully participate in the social and economic lives of their community. In lower-income countries, people with disabilities are likely to have fewer opportunities to spend on needed items thus resulting in substantial unmet need for disability-related goods and services. Failing to account for these unmet needs can lead to inadequate systems of social protection if they are based solely on SOL estimates. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Costs Incurred by People with Disabilities)
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