Effects of the Great Recession on Income Poverty and Material Hardships of Working-Age Adults with Disabilities

• Activity Number: 366
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 2, 2016 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Social Statistics Section
• Author(s): Subhrangshu Nandi* and Subharati Ghosh and Susan Parish
• Companies: University of Wisconsin - Madison and Tata Institute of Social Sciences and Brandeis University
• Keywords: Disability ; Income poverty ; SIPP ; Great recession ; Material Hardships

Abstract

The two aims of this study were to (a) compare the relative impact of the Great Recession on income poverty and material hardships of working-age adu;ts with disabilities to households without a disabled working-age adult (b) compare participation in safety net programs during the great recession by the same two type of households. We analyzed data from the 2008 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (June 2008 through May 2013), which is nationally representative of the US non-institutionalized civilian population. We fit mixed effect models between income poverty rate and disability, controlling for demographic variables like race, gender and marital status of household head. To isolate the effect of the great recession, we control for the baseline value of IPR of each household. Our results show that although households with working-age adults with disabilities show consistently higher income poverty rates, when controlled for baseline, the impact of great recession differs significantly across different demographic subgroups.