What Happens to People After Moderate and Serious Disability? A Longitudianal Study of Satisfaction with Different Areas of Life

The current study uses a large British panel data set to examine the impact of disability, and the speed and extent of adaptation to disability, in seven domain satisfactions. Results show that the onset of a severe disability has the most detrimental impact on health, income, and social life in that order. Adaptation in the domain satisfactions is complete for the moderately disabled. However, there is little evidence of adaptation to severe disability in any of the affected domains. Finally, this paper proposes van Praag et al's (2003) two-layer model as an alternative way to study adaptation.