The Americans with Disabilities Act and the Labor Market Experience of Workers with Disabilities: Evidence from the SIPP

This paper uses data from the 1990 and 1993 SIPP to examine the labor market experience of workers with disabilities. We first examine wage differentials between workers with and without disabilities after providing detailed controls for job conditions. We next examine the relationship between wages and the prevalence of persons with disabilities in an occupation. The final section of the paper examines job mobility differences between workers with and without disabilities. We find that there is a relatively large wage differential between workers with and without disabilities that appears to have increased between 1990 and 1993 for males. This differential is relatively unaffected by the addition of detailed occupational characteristics. The paper also finds support for the quality sorting hypothesis, which suggests the proportion of workers with disabilities in an occupation is capturing unmeasured ability within occupations. Finally, we find that there are relatively few differences in mobility patterns across disability status. We do find, however, that workers with disabilities are more likely to make involuntary job changes than nondisabiled workers suggesting there may be employer prejudice in terminations or that there is a higher likelihood of job mismatch among workers with disabilities. Overall, we find there are relatively few differences between 1990 and 1993 suggesting that either the ADA has not had a major impact on the labor market experience for workers with disabilities, or that these effects do not appear in the 1993 data.