Sometimes, you see a statistic that will turn your head. That was particularly true in a recent news headline, “CDC Data Shows Over 70 Million U.S. Adults Reported Having a Disability”.
The U.S. has about 335 million people, with roughly 262 million of them being 18 or older. If 70 million adults have a disability, that’s more than 1 in 4 (26.7%), which is probably not the percentage you would expect.
How Do We Define Disability?
Defining disability is crucial. In our industry, we often consider “disability” as a reason for absenteeism and the basis for providing income replacement. However, if one in four adults were receiving disability income, that would represent a significant issue. To clarify, I gathered more reliable data from the SSA, the Census Bureau, BLS, and the CDC to provide directional insight.
Breaking Down the Numbers
Current estimates are that the US Adult population is around 262 million (of around 335 million total). This group can be further divided into those aged 18-65, 65+, and workforce participants.
The next step is distributing the 70 million adults with disabilities across these demographics.
Let’s start with people who are 65+. The CDC report told us that 43.9% of those 70 million who identify as disabled are 65+. I estimated that the vast majority of the 26.4 million were not in the workforce (25.5 million), but there are clearly some who have disabilities they can still work with (900,000).
Now, we shift our focus to the 18-65 demographic, which is the group we spend most of our time considering. As I began this exercise, I believed that the majority of people with disabilities would belong to the 65+ age group. However, according to that CDC report, we are now left with 43.6 million individuals in this age range who have a disability. That’s not 1 in 4 for this group, but it is still over 1 in 5 (21.6%). Would you have guessed that?
To reiterate, these statistics on disability are self-reported, and the definition of disability varies from person to person. However, before examining how individuals define their disabilities, it may be beneficial to view “disability” as a “big tent.” More on this shortly.
To continue providing context for this information, let’s consider the “disabled” population we may be more familiar with—the “Long-Term Disabled.” In our world, that would mean people receiving LTD benefits, and for this exercise, I’ve leaned on public information from Social Security that tells us something about them.
According to the SSA, about six million people aged 18 to 65 are receiving SSDI (excluding those receiving “widow benefits” and “disabled adult children”). I estimated that around five million people aged 65 and older are “long-term disabled” (since they would mostly be receiving SS retirement income), but I’m not particularly focused on that number anyway.
I wanted to gain insight into the number of people in the 18-65 age range who are considered “long-term disabled” compared to those who identify as having a disability. My estimate for individuals actively in the workforce who are long-term disabled is around one million. While we could certainly argue about that number, at a rate of 0.6% of the population, it seems accurate for workers in that category receiving SSDI.
If we consider these estimates, there are still 17.6 million adults aged 18 to 65 with a disability who are not classified as “long-term disabled.” This represents nearly 95%. When discussing individuals with disabilities, it’s essential to recognize that 95% of them may have a disability that is not visible or does not affect their ability to work.
What to take away from this?
Many more individuals than you might realize identify as having a disability. As many as one in five people in the workforce have some form of disability. You may not notice it, and perhaps you wouldn’t react the same way if you experienced the same condition.
Question your perception of disability. Is the successful executive with dyslexia included in this group? Is the call center employee dealing with depression part of this group? They might be, and perhaps they should be.
Recognizing that over one in five people in the workforce have some form of disability is a crucial step toward normalizing it. By normalizing disability, we create a welcoming environment for 20% of our family, friends, and colleagues.
By normalizing disabilities, we create a better environment for people with disabilities or those recovering from a disabling event, making disability income protection more affordable and relatable for all workers.
