Disability, Work, and Income Maintenance: Prevalence of Disability, 1966

MORE THAK one-sixth of the civilian noninstitutional population of working age were limited in their ability to work because of a chronic health condition or impairment in 1966. A major proportion of the waste of manpower through involuntary nonparticipation in the labor force, unemployment, and underemployment may be attributed to disability. Public income-support programs provided income for a majority of the severely disabled, but two-fifths of the severely disabled men are neither employed nor receiving wage-replacement income. Although t,hree-fifths of the severely disabled women received no public support or \v:Lge-rel)lacemeat income, they are as a group less dependent than men on earnings and earnings replacement programs. Disability causes substantial losses of earnings and family income. Public programs designed to offset the wage losses of disability paid out more than $8 billion in cash benefits and assistance to the disabled and their dependents in 1966. Wagereplacement benefits provide only a fraction of the income available from earnings, however, and they are in many cases, below minimum budgetary standards of adequacy. For the disabled individual, his family, and society, disability is a social and economic problem of major dimensions. These findings from the 1966 Social Security Survey of Disabled Adults are based on a national survey of all noninstitutionalized persons aged 18-64. The field work was carried out during the spring of 1966 for the Social Security Administration by the Bureau of the Census.l The identification and classification of the disabled is derived from the individual’s evaluation of work limitations rather than from medical evaluations of impairment. The data provide estimates of the extent to which adults of working age are limited in work capacit,y because of chronic health conditions and associated psychological and physical residuals. The survey methods and sample design are described in the technical summary at the end of the article.