Dismantling the Poverty Trap: Disability Policy for the 21st Century. Policy Brief

Working-age Americans with disabilities are much more likely to live in poverty than other Americans and generally did not share in the economic prosperity of the late 1990s. At the same time, public expenditures to support them are growing at a rate that will be difficult to sustain when the baby boom generation retires and begins to draw Social Security Retirement and Medicare benefits. We argue that this discouraging situation will continue unless we can bring disability programs into line with more contemporary understanding of the capabilities of people with disabilities and successfully implement broad, systemic reforms to promote their economic self-sufficiency. This policy brief summarizes a larger paper (Stapleton, O’Day, Livermore & Imparato, 2005). It suggests principles to guide reforms and encourage debate. Future policy briefs will elaborate on some of these principles

Dismantling the Poverty Trap: Disability Policy for the Twenty-First Century

Working-age people with disabilities are much more likely than people without disabilities to live in poverty and not be employed or have shared in the economic prosperity of the late 1990s. Today’s disability policies, which remain rooted in paternalism, create a “poverty trap” that recent reforms have not resolved. This discouraging situation will continue unless broad, systemic reforms promoting economic self-sufficiency are implemented, in line with more modern thinking about disability. Indeed, the implementation of such reforms may be the only way to protect people with disabilities from the probable loss of benefits if the federal government cuts funding for entitlement programs. This article suggests some principles to guide reforms and encourage debate and asks whether such comprehensive reforms can be successfully designed and implemented