IJPDS International Journal of Population Data Science

A new Disability Statistics – Estimates Database (DS-E Database) has been created by an international research team from Colombia, India, South Africa, Switzerland, and the USA.  The Disability Data Initiative, or DDI, is an international and interdisciplinary research programme that provides analyses of disability data to help advance the rights of persons with disabilities and sustainable human development for all.

Taking advantage of data from household surveys and population censuses with an internationally comparable short set of questions on disability, the DDI has produced statistics for 40 countries and 6,584 subnational locations. It includes disability statistics with vital information about education, personal activities, health, standards of living, economic insecurity and poverty for people living with a disability, and has revealed that about one in six adults have some type of disability.

Given the complexity of defining and measuring disability, the DS-E Database uses different methods to breakdown the adult population into subgroups based on disability severity and type, allowing for deeper analysis on subgroups of the adult population based on sex, rural/urban residence and age groups as well as areas within countries.

The current study, published in the International Journal of Population Data Science (IJPDS), revealed that for certain indicators, inequalities between persons with and without disabilities are consistently experienced across and within countries. This is particularly evident in areas like education and poverty. Overall, results suggest that persons with disabilities seem to be ‘left behind’ and that national and local policymakers must prioritise disability-inclusive approaches to address disparities both within and across countries.

There are only five years left to achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, which pledges to “leave no one behind”. Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 10 states that “inequality within and among countries is a persistent cause for concern.” While the achievement of the 17 SDGs needs to be monitored for persons with disabilities, the lack of statistics broken down by disability status makes it challenging to study their situation at both national and subnational levels and to factor those statistics into budgetary, policy, and program decisions.

DDI’s principal investigator and senior author, Sophie Mitra, said, “Currently, there is a general lack of information on the inequalities that persons with disabilities face across and within countries. National statistics offices and policy studies often do not produce statistics on key indicators such as poverty or employment rates separately for persons with and without disabilities. This makes it challenging to develop, and advocate for, disability-inclusive policies and practices at national and local levels and to evaluate existing policies in terms of their impacts on persons with disabilities.”

The DS-E Database is accessible in an interactive platform and in downloadable files at this link.

 

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DDI Researchers

Carpenter, B., Kamalakannan, S., Patchaiappan, K., Theiss, K., Yap, J., Hanass-Hancock, J., Murthy, G., Pinilla-Roncancio, M., Rivas Velarde, M. and Mitra, S. (2024) “Data Resource Profile: The Disability Statistics -- Estimates Database (DS-E Database). An innovative database of internationally comparable statistics on disability inequalities”, International Journal of Population Data Science, 8(6). doi: 10.23889/ijpds.v8i6.2478.