Invisible or Mainstream? Disability in Surveys and Censuses in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Sophie Mitra, Wei Chen, Justine Hervé, Sophia Pirozzi and Jaclyn Yap
Additional contact information
Wei Chen: Fordham University
Justine Hervé: Fordham University
Sophia Pirozzi: Fordham University
Jaclyn Yap: Fordham University

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2022, vol. 163, issue 1, No 9, 219-249

Abstract: Abstract This paper examines to what extent household surveys and censuses in low- and middle-income countries include disability questions and the types of questions under use. We found that only 31% of 734 datasets between 2009 and 2018 from 133 low- and middle-income countries have at least one disability-related question. Of the surveys reviewed, 15% of the datasets have functional difficulty questions that meet international standards, i.e. Washington Group short set or other functional difficulty questions. Meanwhile, the most asked disability question “Do you have a disability?” is problematic as it does not produce meaningful and internationally comparable data. We recommend the adoption of functional difficulty questions for all surveys and censuses to track the progress of the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as well as the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Keywords: Data; Censuses; Surveys; Disability; Functional difficulties (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11205-022-02879-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:soinre:v:163:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1007_s11205-022-02879-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11205-022-02879-9

Access Statistics for this article

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement is currently edited by Filomena Maggino

More articles in Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().