Publication:
Disability and Poverty in Developing Countries: A Snapshot from the World Health Survey

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Files in English
English PDF (3.49 MB)
1,546 downloads
English Text (808.88 KB)
93 downloads
Date
2011-04
ISSN
Published
2011-04
Editor(s)
Abstract
Disability and poverty are dynamic and intricately linked phenomena. In developed countries, a large body of empirical research shows that persons with disabilities experience inter alia comparatively lower educational attainment, lower employment and higher unemployment rates, worse living conditions, and higher poverty rates. This study aims to contribute to the empirical research on social and economic conditions of people with disabilities in developing countries. Using comparable data and methods across countries, this study presents a snapshot of economic and poverty situation of working-age persons with disabilities and their households in fifteen developing countries. This research is relevant for several reasons. First, it contributes to a currently small body of empirical evidence on the economic status of persons with disabilities in developing countries. Second, by providing a baseline data on the economic well-being and the poverty status of working-age persons with disabilities and their households in 2003 in the countries under study, it can inform national disability policies. Finally, this study can also inform future data and research efforts on disability in developing countries. This study is structured as follows. Section two provides definitions and some background on disability and poverty. Section three describes the data and methods. Section four presents disability prevalence estimates in the fifteen developing countries under study and results on the economic well-being of working-age population at the individual and household levels. Section five gives results of an analysis of multidimensional poverty across disability status. Section six concludes definitions and some background information on disability and poverty, describes some of the linkages between them and reviews recent literature on the socioeconomic status of persons with disability.
Link to Data Set
Citation
Mitra, Sophie; Posarac, Aleksandra; Vick, Brandon. 2011. Disability and Poverty in Developing Countries: A Snapshot from the World Health Survey. Social Protection Discussion Paper;1109. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/27369 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.
Associated URLs
Associated content
Report Series
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue

Related items

Showing items related by metadata.

  • Publication
    Disability in the Palestinian Territories
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-04-11) World Bank
    This assessment originated from the dialogue on reforming the Cash Transfer Program (CTP) managed by the Ministry of Social Affairs (MOSA) to increase monetary support for people with disabilities (PWD). According to the beneficiaries, the current benefit payment is not sufficient to address the special needs of a household with a member with disability. In response to the demand of the beneficiaries, the MOSA considered additional compensation for vulnerable households including PWD; an analysis was conducted to weight the costs and benefits of modifying the targeting formula to accommodate additional compensation for PWD. The results did not support increasing the monetary compensation because the costs of adjustment were expected to outweigh the benefits and do so at the expense of larger number of poor beneficiaries. Furthermore, global evidence suggests that cash transfers are not necessarily the sole or right instrument to address the needs of PWD in an adequate manner. Rather, meeting the needs requires a holistic approach with greater focus on providing services complemented by temporary cash benefits. Also, compensating only by cash is not sustainable.
  • Publication
    Economic Implications of Chronic Illness and Disability : In Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union
    (Washington, DC : World Bank, 2008) Mete, Cem
    This report aims to fill in the knowledge gap in this field by analyzing cross-country data on basic indicators, and by carrying out more detailed empirical analysis on causal relationships of interest, including the impact of disability on employment, wages, poverty, and children's school enrollments-focusing on four transition countries with household survey data sets that allow more elaborate econometric analyses. This report argues that it is timely to bring the economic costs of disability to the forefront of development policy because of the large impact poor health status and disabilities have on employment, poverty, children's schooling, and time spent in caring for disabled individuals, especially by adult females (which in turn inhibits higher female labor force participation prospectus). In recent years, there has been some recognition of the need to discuss disability issues in strategy documents such as poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSPs) and country assistance strategies (CASs). But in the absence of basic empirical evidence on the living conditions and behavior of disabled individuals, it is a challenge to formulate concrete steps to tackle this particular economic development problem.
  • Publication
    Poverty Reduction Strategies : Their Importance for Disability
    (Washington, DC, 2004-06-07) World Bank
    This report is an attempt to assess the validity of poverty reduction strategies as an effective tool to manage poverty brought about by disability, by reviewing the disability policy content of poverty reduction strategy papers. In doing so, the report focuses on whether the specific poverty dimensions of disabled persons are acknowledged and the critical interventions for improving the economic and social integration of disabled persons are included in poverty reduction strategy papers. There is a wide consensus that disabled persons, being disproportionately poor, are among the population groups that should benefit from the poverty reduction programs of poverty reduction strategy papers. The issue, however, is whether they are de facto excluded from benefiting from current poverty reduction strategies. Poverty reduction strategy papers do not meet the needs of disabled persons because they are based on a limited social protection policy that conveys a wrong impression about the abilities and aspirations of the majority of disabled persons. Furthermore, they do not reflect the basic principles of the modern approach to disability adopted by the United Nations. Progress across regions and in developing the various components of the disability strategy has remained uneven. Partly for historical and institutional reasons related to the importance of pensions and transfers for the government budget, disability issues have received more attention among Eastern European countries. They have received the least attention in the Africa region.
  • Publication
    Russian Federation : The Demographic Transition and Its Implications for Adult Learning and Long-Term Care Policies
    (Washington, DC, 2011-01) World Bank
    This report describes the demographic transition in the Russian Federation and its implications for adult learning and long-term care policies. The population of Russia is aging and declining rapidly compared to other European nations. Russia's current age structure results from decades of complex demographic trends that have created a population structure with increasingly fewer young people. Women are having fewer children and are waiting longer to have children. Russia's mortality remains higher than in other developed societies. This high mortality is due to an unusually high incidence of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and injuries among adult men. Two key challenges face Russia. The first challenge is whether public expenditure on pensions and health care will become unsustainable as the size of the elderly population increases. The second challenge is whether declining population sizes will reduce the size of the labor force and hence reduce economic growth.
  • Publication
    Assessing Disability in Working Age Population
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-06-18) Bickenbach, Jerome; Posarac, Aleksandra; Cieza, Alarcos; Kostanjsek, Nenad
    The objectives of this study are two-fold. First, it presents the basics of assessing working age populations for disability benefits. Increasingly, the operational staffs of the World Bank Group (WBG) and the World Health Organization (WHO), as well as of other development organizations, are being requested by governmental policy agencies for technical advice and assistance on how to reform their disability assessment system. Secondly, while acknowledging limitations, both in conception and implementation; it makes a case for why adopting the international classification of functioning, disability, and health (ICF) approach to disability assessment may be smart policy that corresponds well with the aims of modern disability policy that focuses on social and economic inclusion for individuals with disabilities, in the context of a recognition of their fundamental human rights. The study is a follow up work to the world report on disability that WHO and WB published jointly in June 2011. The world report made it clear that the process of disability assessment is an important lever of disability policy in any country, yet little is known about how disability assessment is conducted. This study responds to that knowledge gap, but it also describes a paradigm shift in the assessment of disability, one that moves from prevailing impairment and functional limitation approaches to a disability-based approach.

Users also downloaded

Showing related downloaded files

  • Publication
    Breaking the Conflict Trap : Civil War and Development Policy
    (Washington, DC: World Bank and Oxford University Press, 2003) Collier, Paul; Elliott, V. L.; Hegre, Håvard; Hoeffler, Anke; Reynal-Querol, Marta; Sambanis, Nicholas
    Most wars are now civil wars. Even though international wars attract enormous global attention, they have become infrequent and brief. Civil wars usually attract less attention, but they have become increasingly common and typically go on for years. This report argues that civil war is now an important issue for development. War retards development, but conversely, development retards war. This double causation gives rise to virtuous and vicious circles. Where development succeeds, countries become progressively safer from violent conflict, making subsequent development easier. Where development fails, countries are at high risk of becoming caught in a conflict trap in which war wrecks the economy and increases the risk of further war. The global incidence of civil war is high because the international community has done little to avert it. Inertia is rooted in two beliefs: that we can safely 'let them fight it out among themselves' and that 'nothing can be done' because civil war is driven by ancestral ethnic and religious hatreds. The purpose of this report is to challenge these beliefs.
  • Publication
    Governance Matters VIII : Aggregate and Individual Governance Indicators 1996–2008
    (2009-06-01) Kaufmann, Daniel; Kraay, Aart; Mastruzzi, Massimo
    This paper reports on the 2009 update of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) research project, covering 212 countries and territories and measuring six dimensions of governance between 1996 and 2008: Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism, Government Effectiveness, Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law, and Control of Corruption. These aggregate indicators are based on hundreds of specific and disaggregated individual variables measuring various dimensions of governance, taken from 35 data sources provided by 33 different organizations. The data reflect the views on governance of public sector, private sector and NGO experts, as well as thousands of citizen and firm survey respondents worldwide. The authors also explicitly report the margins of error accompanying each country estimate. These reflect the inherent difficulties in measuring governance using any kind of data. They find that even after taking margins of error into account, the WGI permit meaningful cross-country comparisons as well as monitoring progress over time. The aggregate indicators, together with the disaggregated underlying indicators, are available at www.govindicators.org.
  • Publication
    Design Thinking for Social Innovation
    (2010-07) Brown, Tim; Wyatt, Jocelyn
    Designers have traditionally focused on enchancing the look and functionality of products.
  • Publication
    Government Matters III : Governance Indicators for 1996-2002
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-08) Kaufmann, Daniel; Kraay, Aart; Mastruzzi, Massimo
    The authors present estimates of six dimensions of governance covering 199 countries and territories for four time periods: 1996, 1998, 2000, and 2002. These indicators are based on several hundred individual variables measuring perceptions of governance, drawn from 25 separate data sources constructed by 18 different organizations. The authors assign these individual measures of governance to categories capturing key dimensions of governance and use an unobserved components model to construct six aggregate governance indicators in each of the four periods. They present the point estimates of the dimensions of governance as well as the margins of errors for each country for the four periods. The governance indicators reported here are an update and expansion of previous research work on indicators initiated in 1998 (Kaufmann, Kraay, and Zoido-Lobat 1999a,b and 2002). The authors also address various methodological issues, including the interpretation and use of the data given the estimated margins of errors.
  • Publication
    Governance Matters IV : Governance Indicators for 1996-2004
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-06) Kaufmann, Daniel; Kraay, Aart; Mastruzzi, Massimo
    The authors present the latest update of their aggregate governance indicators, together with new analysis of several issues related to the use of these measures. The governance indicators measure the following six dimensions of governance: (1) voice and accountability; (2) political instability and violence; (3) government effectiveness; (4) regulatory quality; (5) rule of law, and (6) control of corruption. They cover 209 countries and territories for 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, and 2004. They are based on several hundred individual variables measuring perceptions of governance, drawn from 37 separate data sources constructed by 31 organizations. The authors present estimates of the six dimensions of governance for each period, as well as margins of error capturing the range of likely values for each country. These margins of error are not unique to perceptions-based measures of governance, but are an important feature of all efforts to measure governance, including objective indicators. In fact, the authors give examples of how individual objective measures provide an incomplete picture of even the quite particular dimensions of governance that they are intended to measure. The authors also analyze in detail changes over time in their estimates of governance; provide a framework for assessing the statistical significance of changes in governance; and suggest a simple rule of thumb for identifying statistically significant changes in country governance over time. The ability to identify significant changes in governance over time is much higher for aggregate indicators than for any individual indicator. While the authors find that the quality of governance in a number of countries has changed significantly (in both directions), they also provide evidence suggesting that there are no trends, for better or worse, in global averages of governance. Finally, they interpret the strong observed correlation between income and governance, and argue against recent efforts to apply a discount to governance performance in low-income countries.