Material Hardship Among Working-Aged Americans with Mental Health Disorders and Learning Disabilities

Background/Purpose:Research exploring economic disparities by race, gender, and disability type have revealed that individuals with mental health disorders and learning disabilities experience significantly greater chances of poverty and reduced incomes, regardless of labor market engagement. Still, little research has explored the degree to which this translates to deprivation and hardship. Poverty researchers have suggested that material hardship measures are more accurate for capturing absolute basic need. To further understand the economic disparities experienced by Americans with disabilities, this study investigated the role of material hardship by race, gender, and disability type.

Methods:Data were obtained from the public use version of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) Core, Functional Limitation and Disabilities topical module, and Adult Well-Being topical module for the 2001, 2004, and 2008 panels. Data were limited to include only the time points that the topical module data were being collected, individuals who were working-age (between the ages of 16 and 70), and individuals who reported having at least one limitation. Data were weighted at the individual level to be representative of the U.S. population. Limitation type was constructed from 62 variables that were used to construct four possible categories: physical, sensory, mental health, and learning. Material hardship measures were constructed as advised by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) to account for seven different basic material hardship categories: durable goods, housing safety, neighborhood quality, crime, community services, basic needs, and food sufficiency. Predictive and comparative analyses were conducted to determine trends in material hardship for individuals with differing types of limitation. Predictive measures were controlled for age, education, race, number of children in the home, gender, marital status, and work limiting disability.

Results: A total of 593,200 cases representing 130,799 survey participants were examined to explore the connection between disability and material hardship. Individuals with mental health limitations were most likely across all types of limitation to have less than six durable goods, have at least one threat to safety in the home, have factors reducing neighborhood quality, report taking at least four actions to protect themselves inside or outside the home from crime, experience dissatisfaction with community services, have difficulty meeting basic needs, and experience food insufficiency. Individuals with learning disabilities, were second most likely to have these same experiences with the exception of neighborhood issues and crime.

Implications: As one of the largest providers of mental health and special-needs educational services in the United States, social workers are uniquely tasked with understanding and challenging systemic inequalities among those they serve. Individuals with mental health disorders and learning disabilities are more likely to experience income poverty and material hardship, which speaks to the degree of economic inequality that individuals with these types of disabilities continue to face. Social workers are called to advocate for furthering anti-discrimination policies that work to close the economic gap for American workers with disabilities.