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

World Bank Social Protection Working Paper No. 1109

258 Pages Posted: 11 Aug 2011

See all articles by Sophie Mitra

Sophie Mitra

Fordham University

Aleksandra Posarac

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Brandon C. Vick

Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Date Written: April 2011

Abstract

The association between disability and poverty has been noted intuitively, although there is little systematic evidence to support this claim, mainly due to a lack of quality data on disability. This paper attempts to fill a knowledge gap on disability and poverty in developing countries by using a unique data set, the World Health Survey, which has comparable measures of disability and economic indicators for working age population in 15 developing countries. Disability is significantly associated with higher multidimensional poverty in most of the developing countries under study. At the individual level, in most of the countries included in the study, persons with disabilities have lower educational attainment and experience lower employment rates than persons without disabilities. At the household level, in most countries households with disabilities are not worse off when their well-being is measured by mean non-health PCE. However, in most countries, households with disabilities have a significantly lower mean asset index and report spending a higher proportion of their expenditure on health care.

Keywords: disability, poverty, world health survey, economic outcomes, multidimensional poverty measure, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Pakistan, the Philippines, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Paraguay

JEL Classification: I31, J14, O15

Suggested Citation

Mitra, Sophie and Posarac, Aleksandra and Vick, Brandon C., Disability and Poverty in Developing Countries: A Snapshot from the World Health Survey (April 2011). World Bank Social Protection Working Paper No. 1109, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1908128 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1908128

Sophie Mitra (Contact Author)

Fordham University ( email )

441 East Fordham road
Bronx, NY 10458
United States

HOME PAGE: http://www.fordham.edu/economics/mitra

Aleksandra Posarac

affiliation not provided to SSRN ( email )

Brandon C. Vick

Indiana University of Pennsylvania ( email )

Indiana, PA 15705
United States

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