Successful labor market transitions for persons with disabilities: Factors affecting the probability of entering and maintaining employment

Abstract

This paper uses data from the Annual March Supplement to the Current Population Survey (CPS) to provide contemporary estimates of employment rates among persons with disabilities, to estimate the fraction of such persons who did not work in the year prior to the survey but were able to enter jobs, to estimate the fraction of those who worked in the year prior to survey but who left jobs and to analyze the factors affecting the probability that persons with disabilities will be able to enter new jobs or maintain the ones they hold.We find that persons with disabilities are about 30 percent as likely to be employed at any one time as persons without disabilities, if unemployed they are about one-fifth as likely to enter jobs and if employed they are about three times as likely to leave work. Differences between persons with and without disabilities in demographic and work characteristics account for a substantial fraction of the gap in their employment rates; a significant, albeit smaller, fraction of the difference in their ability to maintain jobs they already hold; and almost none of the difference in their ability to gain entry to new jobs. Disability, thus, would appear to account for low rates of job entry among persons with disabilities, but low employment rates and high rates of job loss among such persons are apparently due in large measure to other demographic and occupational factors.

Citation

Yelin, E. and Trupin, L. (2000), "Successful labor market transitions for persons with disabilities: Factors affecting the probability of entering and maintaining employment", Altman, B.M. and Barnartt, S.N. (Ed.) Expanding the Scope of Social Science Research on Disability (Research in Social Science and Disability, Vol. 1), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 105-129. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1479-3547(00)80007-X