Lisa Schur

Employment of People with Disabilities Following the ADA

Studies finding a negative effect of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) on the employment of people with disabilities have used the work disability measure, which has several potential problems in measuring employment trends. Using Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) data that permit alternative measures of disability, this study finds decreased employment among those reporting work disabilities in the first few years after the ADA was passed but increased employment when using a more probably appropriate measure of ADA coverage (functional and activity limitations that do not prevent work). State-by-state variation in labor market tightness is used to find that people with disabilities may have especially procyclical employment, but the contrary results in overall employment trends remain after accounting for labor market tightness. Given the problems in measuring who is covered by the ADA, there is reason to be cautious of both positive and negative findings.

Is Disability Disabling in All Workplaces? Workplace Disparities and Corporate Culture

Using nearly 30,000 employee surveys from fourteen companies, we find disability is linked to lower average pay, job security, training, and participation in decisions, and to more negative attitudes toward the job and company. Disability gaps in attitudes vary substantially, however, across companies and worksites, with no attitude gaps in worksites rated highly by all employees for fairness and responsiveness. The results indicate that corporate cultures that are responsive to the needs of all employees are especially beneficial for employees with disabilities.

Barriers or Opportunities? The Causes of Contingent and Part-time Work Among People with Disabilities

Why are workers with disabilities about twice as likely as nondisabled workers to be in contingent and part-time jobs? This study finds that disability income program earnings limits and employer discrimination play relatively minor roles, whereas the primary explanation is health problems that make traditional full-time jobs difficult or impossible for many people with disabilities. Despite the lower pay and other drawbacks of many nonstandard jobs, they enable many people with disabilities to work who otherwise would not be employed. Policy implications are discussed.

What types of jobs do people with disabilities want

Introduction Do non-employed people with disabilities want to work, and if so, what types of jobs do they want? Researchers seeking to explain the low employment rate among people with disabilities have focused primarily on skill gaps, employment disincentives from disability income, accommodation mandates, and (to a lesser extent) employer attitudes and unwelcoming corporate cultures. There has been little attention paid to the attitudes of non-employed people with disabilities. Methods This paper uses the 2006 General Social Survey, a representative national survey of US adults that has disability information and a special supplement on worker preferences, to examine the above question. Results We find that, relative to their non-disabled counterparts, non-employed people with disabilities are (a) as likely to want a job but less likely to be actively searching, (b) as likely to have prior job experience, and (c) similar in their views of the importance of income, job security, and other valued job characteristics. The results, which vary little by type of impairment, indicate that the low employment rate of people with disabilities is not due to their reluctance to work or different job preferences. Conclusion Combined with evidence that a large share of new jobs can be performed by people with disabilities, the findings point toward the value of dismantling barriers to employment facing many people with disabilities.

Enabling Democracy: Disability and Voter Turnout

How likely are the millions of Americans with disabilities to participate in politics? What insights do their experiences provide into overall participation levels and determinants? This article reports the results of a nationally representative household telephone survey of 1,240 peoplestratified to include 700 people with disabilities-following the November 1998 elections. Voter turnout is found to be 20 percentage points lower among people with disabilities than among people without disabilities who have otherwise-similar demographic characteristics. Other standard predictors of turnout such as political efficacy and mobilization explain only a small portion of this gap. There is great variation within the disability sample: the lower turnout is concentrated among people with disabilities who are not employed or who are age 65 or older, who have had recent onset of a disabling condition, and who have difficulty going outside alone (despite the availability of absentee ballots). The findings suggest that disability, apart from imposing resource constraints, often has social and psychological effects that decrease voter turnout through decreased social capital and identification with mainstream society, particularly among senior citizens. The findings also support the idea that general mobility and major life transitions can be important influences on voter turnout in general, and raise questions on the causal relations among age, employment, efficacy, and voter turnout that should be a focus of future research.

Der Differences in Attitudes toward Unions

In the U.S. private sector, women are less likely than men to be union members. This study analyzes a unique national survey (conducted in 1984) to determine if women are less interested than men in unionizing or if, instead, they are equally interested but face higher barriers to unionization. The results support the latter interpretation. In particular, nonunion women in private sector white-collar jobs (representing over half of the female nonunion work force) expressed more interest than comparable men in joining unions. This finding appears to reflect more optimism among the women in this group than among the men about what unions can accomplish; it is not explained by gender differences in attitudes toward jobs or employers. The authors discount theories that family responsibilities, or concerns of female workers that set them apart from men, present special barriers to unionization.

Can I Make a Difference? Efficacy, Employment, and Disability

Political efficacy is a widely studied phenomenon and an important predictor of political participation, but little is known about the political efficacy of the millions of people with disabilities in the United States. This paper reports the results of a nationally representative telephone survey of 1,240 people—stratified to include 700 people with disabilities—following the November 1998 elections. Several measures of efficacy that help predict political activity were found to be significantly lower among people with disabilities than among otherwise similar people without disabilities. Although lower levels of internal efficacy and civic skills could largely be explained by educational and employment gaps, lower levels of other variables (external efficacy, perceived influence of people with disabilities, and perceived treatment of people with disabilities) remained after applying a wide range of controls, indicating that people with disabilities are less likely to see the political system as responsive to them. This perception is concentrated among non–employed people with disabilities. The lower efficacy levels linked to “disability gaps” in employment, income, education, and group attendance appear to account for as much as half of the disability political participation gap; hence, policies intended to increase employment and educational opportunities for people with disabilities have potentially important political effects.

Worksite Segregation and Performance-Related Attitudes

This article explores the effects of structural inequality on organizational outcomes by examining the relationship between worksite segregation and performance-related attitudes by gender, race, and ethnicity. We use a new data set based on detailed surveys of 21,000 U.S. employees among 207 worksites in 14 companies gathered between 2001 and 2006. To measure workplace segregation, the study used the Duncan dissimilarity index and composition measures in a multilevel model, estimating their relationship to performance-related attitudes (company loyalty, willingness to work hard, perceived company fairness, and turnover intention) among Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians, separately for men and women within each of these groups. The key finding is that worksite segregation is linked to worse performance-related attitudes for Black, Hispanic, and Asian males, but is generally not linked to such attitudes for the female groups. These results illustrate the effects that segregation can have on organizations and suggest directions for further research that explores the mechanisms connecting diversity to performance-related outcomes.

Contending with the “Double Handicap”: Political Activism Among Women with Disabilities

Abstract To what extent do women with disabilities experience a “double handicap,” and how do the economic and social disparities they face affect political activism? This paper analyzes these disparities and political activism among women and men with and without disabilities using data from national household surveys conducted in 1998 and 2000. Women with disabilities have particularly low employment and income levels, and lower self-evaluations of civic skills and internal political efficacy, but are similar to men with disabilities in educational attainment and psychological well-being. Their overall political participation is lower than that of men and women without disabilities, which is primarily explained by lower employment and income levels and greater social isolation. They are less likely than men with disabilities to participate in several political activities, but equally likely to take action on disability issues and more likely to participate in protests and take action against perceived discrimination

Introduction to special issue on people with disabilities in the workplace

People with disabilities make up a large and growing population around the globe. The World Health Organization estimates that close to one billion people have disabilities, including 15–19% of the...