Research Stories

by Carrie Barnett

Disabled people earn less money than their able-bodied co-workers. They also are less likely to be employed. That is the prevailing wisdom among most people. But is it true? ASU researchers William G. Johnson and Marjorie Baldwin decided to find out.

Johnson is the director of the Center for Health Information and Research at ASU's Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering. Baldwin is an economist and director of the School of Health Management and Policy at the W. P. Carey School of Business.

Do disabled workers really earn less and have other job-related woes simply because their health conditions make them less productive? The ASU researchers are the first to empirically test that notion.

To their surprise, the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research staffers strongly disagreed that a worker's disability-related functional impairment can hurt his or her productivity. The staffers insisted that productivity problems come only from unenlightened co-workers, bad workplace policies, or discriminatory bosses. They are not based on the limitations of a disabled worker.

The ASU researchers used statistical methods to control variables. The workers' on-the-job experience, education, and functional limitations were considered. All are potentially the cause of wage differentials. With those variables stripped away, the researchers compared disabled and non-disabled workers on a level playing field.

"The evidence strongly suggests that disabled workers are systematically paid less, unrelated to their functional limitations," Baldwin says.

They also found evidence of job discrimination based on disability and unrelated to productivity. Baldwin says there's another lesson learned from their project. "Since 1992, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has not had a whole lot of impact in terms of improving wages and employment rates."

This story was excerpted from the Knowledge @ W. P. Carey web site. To see the full story or other stories from ASU's W. P. Carey School of Business, go to: http://knowledge.wpcarey.asu.edu