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Statistics
How Many People Experience Disability?
Estimates of the number of people with disabilities in the United States vary for a variety of reasons: it is difficult to categorize, may not be a fixed condition and may not be acknowledged by the person. Estimates of the size of the population of people with disabilities in the U.S. includes the 54 million that was used prevalently during the development and passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990. That number is largely supported still by U.S. Census reports. In 2003, the Census Bureau released an analysis of 2000 census data that found 49.7 million people in the age group 5 years and over, non-institutionalized population, with at least one disability. 1
The Census Bureau has framed a set of questions about functional limitations quite broadly. There are no questions about specific conditions. For example, people with specific health conditions or impairments are not directly identified and are counted only if they report one of these impairments, functional limitations, or participation restrictions. Since the Census asks questions about limitations and participation restrictions, it tells us about patterns in the kinds of limitations Americans report rather than giving us an actual count by type of disability. National agencies like the Centers for Disease Control of the Federal Office of Health and Human Services, on the other hand, collect data on types of conditions that cause functional limitations.
Most Common Conditions that Cause Disability in the U.S.
The new definition of disability steps away from diagnosis as a useful way to predict the lived experience or the needs of any one person. We can agree that diagnosis tells us little about any one person’s degree of limitation. The level of disability depends upon a mix of personal and environmental conditions that emphasize or minimize disability. It is still helpful to be reminded of the most common conditions that cause disability in the United States.
“Prevalence” is a measure of a condition in a population at a given point in time. Prevalence data help us to understand the ordinariness of functional limitations.
- Understanding what are the most common types of disabilities can help to dispel some of the assumptions about disability as the experience of a small number of people who are fundamentally different.
- It helps providers to generate a deeper appreciation of the familiar reality of disability in their own families and communities and, almost inevitably, among people that they are already serving.
Adults
The most common reasons for functional limitations—arthritis, back problems, heart disease and respiratory disease—are conditions that most every family experiences.
Most prevalent reasons for functional limitations of adults in the United States 2
1. Arthritis
2. Back problems
3. Heart disease
4. Respiratory disease
Youth
For youth, the picture is significantly different than it is for adults and signals trends in disability that we need to prepare to address as young people move into adult services.
Most prevalent causes of disability in children under 18 years old in the United States 3
1. Specific learning disabilities (44.4%)
2. Speech or language impairments (16.9%)
3. Intellectual disability (9.2%)
4. Emotional disturbance (7.4)
Implications
As the complexity of the definition and the counting issues become clearer, it leads us to reconsider everything we know about disability. It is easier to understand the relevance of the World Health Organization’s perspective that disability should be ‘mainstreamed’ as an ordinary part of being human. Clearly, disability is not a fixed condition of a few but a measure of personal experience with some activity limitation that most of us will experience if we live long enough.
