The Dynamics of being Disabled

Government policies on disability – and criticism of them – rest in parton an understanding of the circumstances of disabled people informedby cross-sectional survey data, dividing the population into “thedisabled” and “the non-disabled”. While conceptual debates about thenature of disability and associated measurement problems have receivedsome attention, the dynamic aspect of disability has been largelyoverlooked. This paper uses two approaches to longitudinal data fromthe British Household Panel Survey to investigate the complexity behindthe snapshot given by cross-sectional data. First, a detailed breakdown isgiven of the working-age population who are disabled at any one timeby the ‘disability trajectories’ they follow over a seven-year period.Second, the expected duration of disability for those who becomedisabled during working life is examined. The results show that only asmall proportion of working age people who experience disability arelong-term disabled, despite the fact that at any one time, long-termdisabled people make up a high proportion of all disabled people. Overhalf of those who become limited in activities of daily living as adultshave spells lasting less than two years, but few who remain disabledafter four years recover. Intermittent patterns of disability, particularlydue to mental illness, are common. The assumption, contrary toevidence presented in this paper, that “once disabled, always disabled”has lead to disability benefits being seen as a one-way street, an outcomewhich marginalises disabled people and is costly for the benefit system.In addition, eligibility criteria for disability benefits and employmentsupport for disabled people often do not reflect the non-continuousnature of some disability. Policies which fail to distinguish between thedifferent trajectories which disabled people follow are unlikely to besuccessful.[...]